ON THE 



OEIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 



ON THE 



ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 



r 



BY 

/ 
HEJfSLEIGH WEDGWOOD, 



XATE FELLOW OP CHTRIST'S COLL., CAMBRIDGE. 




LONDON : 

N. TRiJBNER & CO., 60, PATEENOSTEE EOW. 

1866. 



ZAU rights reserved^ 






^J 



CONTENTS. 



CHAP. 




PAGK 


I. 


INTRODUCTORY 


1 


II. 


ONOMATOPCEIA 


.. 16 


III. 


INTERJECTIONS 


. . 47 


IV. 


ANALOGY 


..101 


V 


CONCLUSION 


.. 126 


APPENDIX I. 


. . 156 


APPENDIX II. 


.. 164 



ON THE 



OEIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 



CHAPTER I. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



The speech of Man in his mother-tongue is not, 
like the song of birds, an instinct implanted by- 
nature in the constitution of every individual of 
the specieSj and either exercised from the moment 
of birth or spontaneously called into play at a cer- 
tain period of growth. If that were so the same 
language would be spoken by all mankind, in the 
same way that the same species of bird utters the 
same notes in the most distant countries, and the 
song of the lark in Germany or Italy is not dis- 
tinguishable from that which trills from the Eng- 
lish skiea. But Man speaks a thousand different 

dialects, the use of which is acquired in infancy 
1 



^ LANGUAGE AN ACQUIRED ART. 

by the same gradual process as the practice of a 
mechanical art_, from the speech of those in whose 
care the infant is placed ; and where he is cut off 
by natural deafness from the influence of their 
speech, he originates no language of his own, but 
grows up dumb as well as deaf. 

Thus language in its actual condkion is an art, 
like baking or weaving, handed down from genera- 
tion to generation, and when we would trace up- 
wards to its origin the pedigree of this grand dis- 
tinction between man and the brute creation, we 
must either suppose that the line of tradition has 
been absolutely endless, that there never was a 
period at which the family of man was not to be 
found on earth, speaking a language bequeathed 
to him by his ancestors, or we must at last arrive at 
a generation which was not taught their language 
by their parents. The question then arises, how 
did the generation, in which language was origin- 
ally developed, attain so valuable an art ? !^Iust 
we suppose that our first parents were super- 
naturally endowed with the power of speaking 
and understanding a definite language, which 
was transmitted in natural course to their de- 
scendants, and was variously modified in different 
lines of descent through countless ages, during 



QUESTION STATED. 6 

wliicli the race of man spread over the earth in 
separate families of people, until languages were 
produced between which, as at present, no cog- 
nizable relation can be traced ? 

Or is it possible^, among the principles recog- 
nized as having contributed elements more or 
less abundant in every known language, to indi- 
cate a sufficient cause for the entire origination 
of language in a generation of men who had not 
yet acquired the command of that great instru- 
ment of thought, though in every natural capacity 
the same as ourselves ? 

When the question is brought to this definite 
stage, the same step will be gained in the science 
of language which was made in geology, when it 
was recognized that the phenomena of the science 
must be explained by the action of powers, such as 
are known to be active at the present day in 
working changes on the structure of the earth. 
The investigator of speech must accept as his start- 
ing-ground the existence of man as yet with- 
out knowledge of language, but endowed with 
intellectual powers and command of his bodily 
frame, such as we ourselves are conscious of pos- 
sessing, in the same way that the geologist takes 
his stand on the fact of a globe composed of lands 
1* 



PARADOX 



and seas subjected as at tlie present day to the 
influence of rains and tides, tempests, frosts, earth- 
quakes, and subterranean fires. 

A preliminary objection to the supposition of 
any natural origin of language has been raised by 
the modern German school of philosophers, whose 
theory leads them to deny the possibility of man 
having ever existed in a state of mutism. *' Man 
is only man by speech," says W. v. Humboldt, 
"but in order to discover speech he must already 
be man." And Max MiiUer, who cites the epigram, 
adopts the opinion it expresses. " Philosophers," 
he says (Lectures on the Science of Language, p. 
347), " who imagine that the first man though 
left to himself would gradually have emerged 
from a state of mutism and have invented words 
for every new conception that arose in his mind, 
forget that man could not by his own power have 
acquired the faculty of speech, which is the dis- 
tinctive character of mankind, unattained and un- 
attainable by the mute creation." The supposed 
difficulty is altogether a fallacy arising from a 
confusion between the faculty of speech and the 
actual knowledge of language. 

The possession of the faculty of speech means 
only that man is rendered capable of speech by 



OF HUMBOLDT. O 

the original constitution of his mind and physical 
frame, as a bird of flying by the possession of 
wings ; but inasmuch as man does not learn to 
speak as a bird to fly by the instinctive exercise 
of the proper organ, it becomes a legitimate object 
of inquiry how the skilled use of the tongue was 
originally acquired. 

It is surprising that any one should have stuck 
at the German paradox, in the face of the patent 
fact that we all are born in a state of mutism, and 
gradually acquire the use of language from inter- 
course with those around us. The case of those 
born deaf is still more striking, who remain in a 
state of mutism until they have the good fortune 
to meet with skilled teachers, by whom they may 
be taught not only to express their thoughts by 
means of manual signs, but also to speak intel- 
ligibly notwithstanding the disadvantage of not 
hearing their own voice. 

Since then it is matter of fact that individuals 
are found by no means wanting in intelligence 
who only attain the use of speech in mature life, 
and others who never attain it at all, it is plain 
that there can be no metaphysical objection to the 
supposition that the family of man was in exist- 
ence at a period when the use of language was 



6 THEORY OF A 

wholly unknown. How man in so imperfect a 
state could manage to support himself and main- 
tain his ground against the wild beasts is a ques- 
tion which need not concern us. 

The theory of the modern German school as ex- 
plained by Miiller (p. 387), asserts that man in his 
primitive and perfect state had instincts of which 
no traces remain at the present da}'', the instinct 
being lost when the purpose for which it was 
given was fulfilled, as the senses become weaker 
when, as in the case of scent^ they become useless. 
By such an instinct the primitive man was irre- 
sistibly impelled to accompany every conception 
of his mind by an exertion of the voice, ar- 
ticulately modulated in correspondence with the 
thought which called it forth, in a manner 
analogous to that in which a body, struck by a 
hammer, answers with a diflferent ring according 
as it is composed of metal, stone, or wood. It 
must also be supposed that the same instinct, 
which gave rise to the expression of thought by 
articulate sound, would enable those who heard 
such sounds to understand what was passing in 
the mind of the person who uttered them. Thus 
a stock of significant sounds would be produced 
from whence aU the languages on earth have been 



TEMPORARY INSTINCT. / 

developed, and when " the creative faculty which 
gave to each conception as it thrilled the first 
time through the brain a phonetic expression" 
had its object fulfilled in the establishment of 
language, the instinct faded away, leaving the 
infants of subsequent generations to learn their 
language of their parents, and those who should 
be born deaf to do as well as they could without 
any oral means of communicating their thoughts 
or desires. 

It is sufficient to condemn a speculation like 
the foregoing, that it rests on the supposition of a 
primitive man with a constitution of mind es- 
sentially difiering from our own, whereas what 
we require is an indication of the process by which 
language might have come to a being in all re- 
spects like ourselves. Nor is there any real analogy 
between the efiacement of a sense from want of 
practice and the supposed loss of an instinct when 
no longer wanted for its special purpose. The 
impressions of sense are made by physical afiec- 
tions of certain nerves, as of the nerve of the eye by 
the stimulus of light, and it appears that when the 
organ is left for a lengthened period without the 
appropriate stimulus, its sensibility is diminished, 
and may ultimately be wholly lost, as seen in the 



8 A GRADUAL ORIGIN 

case of animals inhabiting tlie dark caverns of 
America and Carniola, whicli are miiversally blind. 
But if there were an instinctive connection of the 
kind supposed between thought and language, it 
would give the feeling of a necessary connection 
between the meaning and the sound of a word, the 
recognition of which would be a practical exercise 
of the instinct, and ought., according to analogy, to 
keep it from extinction. It is, however, hardly 
worth while seriously to discuss the incidents of 
anything so purely gratuitous as the entire sup- 
position. 

Many attempts have been made in other quarters 
to explain the acquisition of language by the 
exercise of our natural faculties, but generally 
with small success, from failing to meet with suffi- 
cient distinctness the fundamental difficulty of the 
problem, viz. how, antecedent to any knowledge 
of language, man might be led to signify his con- 
ceptions by spoken sound, and to devise such 
modulations for the purpose as to give rise to the 
same conceptions in the mind of others equally 
ignorant of language with himself. 

Yet the conditions of the problem are not so 
remote from all that may be found in actual 
experience at the present day as we are apt to 



TO BE LOOKED FOR. \) 

suppose. We must only not require too much to 
be done at once. "We must not imagine some 
genius of the pristine world conceiving the ad- 
vantages of a better means of communicating with 
his fellows, and elaborating a system of vocal 
signs. 

" If in the present state of the world/' says 
Charma, " some philosopher were to wonder how 
man ever began these houses, palaces, and vessels 
which we see around us, we should answer that 
these were not the things that man began with. 
The savage who first tied the branches of shrubs to 
make himself a shelter was not an architect, and 
he who first floated on the trunk of a tree was 
not the creator of navigation." A like allowance 
must be made for the rudeness of the first steps in 
the process when we are required to explain the 
origin of the complicated languages of civilized life. 
If language was Jhe work of human intelligence 
we may be sure that it was accomplished by ex- 
ceedingly slow^degrees, and when the true mode 
of procedure is finally pointed out, we must not be 
surprised if we meet with the same apparent 
disproportion between the grandeur of the structure 
and the homeliness of the mechanism by which it 
was reared, which was found so great a stumbling- 



10 GESTURES 

block in geology when the modern doctrines of 
that science began to prevail. 

The first step is the great difficulty in the 
problem. If once we can imagine a man like our- 
selves, only altogether ignorant of language, placed 
in circumstances .imder which he will be in- 
stinctively led to make use of his voice, for the 
purpose of leading others to think of something 
beyond the reach of actual apprehension, we shall 
have an adequate explanation of the first act of 
speech. 

Now if man in his pristine condition had the 
same instincts with ourselves he would doubtless, 
before he attained the command of language, have 
expressed his needs by means of gestures or signs 
addressed to the eye, as a traveller at the present 
day_, thrown among people whose language was 
altogether strange to him, would signify his 
hunger by pointing to his mouth and making 
semblance of eating. Nor is there, in all proba- 
bility, a tribe of savages so stupid as not to under- 
stand gestures of such a nature. " Tell me," says 
Socrates in the Cratylus, " if we had neither tongue 
nor voice and wished to call attention to some- 
thing, should we not imitate it as well as we could 
with gestures? Thus if we wanted to describe 



THE EARLIEST SIGNS. 



11 



anything either lofty or lights we should indicate 
it by raising the hands to heaven ; if we wished 
to describe a horse or other animal, we should 
represent it by as near an approach as we could 
make to an imitation in our own person." 

But gestures are not the only means of imitation 
at our command, and we are as clearly taught by 
nature to imitate sounds by the voice, as the shape 
and action of material things by bodily gestures. 
When it happened then in the infancy of communi- 
cation that some sound formed a prominent feature of 
the matter which it was important to make known, 
the same instinct which prompted the use of signi- 
ficant gestures when the matter admitted of being 
so represented, would give rise to the use of the 
voice in imitation of the sound by which the 
subject of communication was now characterized. 

A person terrified by a bull would find it con- 
venient to make known the object of his alarm by 
imitating at once the movements of the animal with 
his head and the bellowing with his voice. A cock 
would be represented by an attempt at the sound of 
crowing, while the arms were beat against the sides 
in imitation of the flapping of the bird^s wings. It 
is by signs like these that Hood describes his raw 
Englishman as making known his wants in France. 



12 SPEECH A SYSTEM 

Moo ! I cried for milk — 

If I wanted bread 

My jaws I set agoing, 

And asked for new-laid eggs 

By clapping hands and crowing." 

Hood's Own. 

There would be neitlier sense no A fun in the 
caricature if it had not a basis of truth in human 
nature, cognizable by the large and unspeculative 
class for whom the author wrote. 

A jest must be addressed to the most superficial 
capacities of apprehension, and therefore may often 
afford better evidence of a fact of consciousness 
than a train of abstruse reasoning. It is on that 
account that so apt an illustration of the only 
comprehensible principle of language has been 
found in the old story of the Englishman at a 
Chinese banquet, who being curious as to the 
composition of a dish he was eating, turned round 
to his native servant with an interrogative Quack, 
quack? The servant answered, Bowwow! inti- 
mating as clearly as if he spoke in English that it 
was dog and not duck that his master was eating. 
The communication that passed between them was 
essentially language, comprehensible to every one 
who was acquainted with the animals in question. 



OF VOCAL SIGI^S. 13 

language therefore which might have been used 
by the first family of man as well as by persons of 
different tongues at the present day. 

The essence of language is a system of vocal 
signs. The mental process underlying the prac- 
tice of speech is the same as when communication 
is carried on by means of bodily gestures, such as 
those in use among the deaf and dumb. The 
same mental principles are involved in a nod or a 
shake of the head as in a verbal agreement or 
refusal. Only in the one case the sign is addressed 
to the eye, in the other to the ear. The problem 
of the origiQ of language thus becomes a par- 
ticular case of the general inquiry, how it may 
be possible to convey meaning by the intervention 
of signs without previous agreement as to the 
sense in which the signs are to be understood. 
To this inquiry there can be but one answer. The 
meaning of a sign will be self-evident only when 
the sign is adapted of itself to put the person ad- 
dressed in mind of the thing signified; which 
can only be done by means of some resemblance 
in the sign to the thing signified, or to something 
associated with it in the mind of the person to 
whom the sign is addressed. The only principle 
upon which the unconventional development of a 



14 EVIDEXCE 

sj^stem of signs can be rationally explained, will 
thus be the artificial exhibition of resemblance, or 
direct imitation of a character by which the thing 
to be signified is distinguished. If then we are 
to explain language as a system of vocal signs 
instinctively springing from the pressure of social 
wants, we must be prepared to exhibit classes of 
words taken from direct imitation, and to show 
how words constructed on such a principle may 
be employed in the signification of things uncon- 
nected with the sense of hearing, as taste, sight, 
and smell, the qualities and relations of things, 
the passions and afiections of the mind and all the 
varied subject of cultivated thought. But in 
attempting the task here shadowed out it will by 
no means be necessary to carry our researches to 
the extent required by MuUer, who in his Lectures 
on the Science of Language expresses his desire to 
remain neutral on the question of origin " until 
some progress has been made in tracing the prin- 
cipal roots not of Sanscrit only^ but of Chinese, Bask, 
the Turanian and Semitic languages, back to the 
cries or the imitated sounds of nature." — 2nd Series, 
p. 92. To lay down conditions like these as to 
the amount of evidence required to establish the 
imitative origin of language is to conjure up a 



REQUIRED. 15 

rampart, behind which the old prejudices may, 
indeed, repose in perfect security. But we cannot 
suppose that the Creator would provide one 
scheme for the origination of language among the 
Aryan nations, another for the Semitic or the 
Turanian ; and if evidence of derivation from 
imitation on a sufficiently extended scale can be 
found within the limits of our own language, we 
shall consider our case as established, without 
waiting until some one has been found to execute 
the same task, in the Basque, Chinese, and 
Samoiede. 



16 



CHAPTER II. 



o:n'Omatopceia. 



The formation of words from imitation of 
sound lias been recognized from tlie earKest pe- 
riod, and as it was the onl}^ principle on whicli the 
possibility of coining words came home to the 
comprehension of every one, it was called Onoma- 
topceia^ or word-making, while the remaining stock 
of language was vaguely regarded as having come 
by inheritance from the first establish ers of speech. 
'^ OvoiMaroTTOLia quidem," says Quintilian, " id est, 
fictio nominis, Graecis inter maximas habita vir- 
tutes, nobis vix permittitur. Et sunt plurima ita 
posita ab iis qui sermonem primi fecerunt, ap- 
tantes adfectibus vocem. Nam miigitus et sihilus 
et murmur inde venerunt." And Diomedes, " Ovo- 
IxaTOTTOiCa est dictio configurata ad imitandam 
vocis confusse significationem, ut tinnitus aeris, 
clangorqae tubarum. Item quum dicimus valvos 



ANIMAL CRIES. 17 

stridere, oves halare, aves tinnire." — Lerscli, Sprach.- 
philosophie der Alten, iii. 130-1. 

The principle is admitted in a grudging way by 
Max MiiUer (2nd Series, p. 298) : 

" There are in many languages words, if we can 
call them so, consisting of mere imitations of the 
cries of animals or the sounds of nature, and some 
of them have been carried along by the stream of 
language into the current of nouns and verbs." 
And elsewhere (p. 89) with less hesitation, " That 
sounds can be rendered in language by sounds, 
and that each language possesses a large stock of 
words imitating the sounds given out by certain 
things, who would deny ? " The class of words 
most obviousty formed on the principle of imita- 
tion is perhaps that which designates the cries of 
animals, the cackling or gaggling of geese, cluck- 
ing of hens, gobbling of turkeys, quacking of 
ducks,, cawing of rooks, cooing or crooing 
of doves, hooting of owls, bumping of bitterns, 
croaking of ravens or frogs, neighing or whinny- 
ing of horses, braying of asses, barking, yelping, 
howling, snarling of dogs, purring or mewing 
of cats, grunting of hogs, belling of deer, roar- 
ing of lions, bellowing of bulls, lowing of oxen, 
bleating of sheep and goats, chirping of sparrows 



18 EARLIEST IMITATIONS 

or crickets, twittering of swallows, chattering of 
pies or monkeys. 

To the same class belong the names of yarious 
inarticulate utterances of our own, as sob, sigh, 
moan, groan, laugh, cough (the two last originally 
pronounced with a guttural, as in Dutch kuch, 
cough ; laclien, lachachen, to laugh — Kiliaan), tit- 
ter, giggle, hiccup, shriek, scream, snore, sneeze, 
wheeze. 

But the chief point of interest in the cry of an 
animal would lie in indicating the presence of the 
animal itself, and the earliest purpose for which 
man would bave occasion to represent the cry 
would be to brinsr the animal that makes it before 
the mind of his hearer. If I take refuge in an 
African yillage and imitate the roaring of a lion 
while I anxiously point to a neighbouring thicket, 
I shall intimate pretty clearly to the natives that 
a lion is lurking in that direction. Here the imita- 
tion of the roar will be practically used as the 
name of a lion. The gestures witb which I point 
will signify that an object of terror is in the 
thicket, and the sound of my voice will specify 
that object as a lion. 

The earliest attempts to represent the cries of 
animals would doubtless, like our actual imitations 



NOT ARTICULATE. 19 

at the present day, consist of mere modulations in 
the tone of the voice without articulate utterance. 
When I imitate the voice of the cock I do not 
cry cock-a-doodle-doo, nor coquericot, nor pah- 
pahahquau, nor aaoa, but I sound the vocal 
instrument in a way that does not admit of being 
spelt. And such doubtless would be the nature 
of the utterance which constituted the first rudi- 
ments of vocal signs with the primitive man. 
But in course of time, as the objects for which 
designations were required became more and. more 
numerous, the necessity of a nicer distinction and 
an easier pronunciation of the imitative sounds, 
would gradually lead to the exercise of that ad- 
mirable apparatus for articulate speech, which the 
Creator has provided in the tongue, lips, and 
throat. The deep sounds uttered in imitation of 
the lowing of an ox would first be pronounced in 
an inarticulate way with the lips slightly parted, 
but sooner or later the ear -would catch the dis- 
tinctness of sound given by uttering the imitation 
at the very moment of the opening of the lips, 
and thus giving it the sound of moo or hoo. 

The passage from direct imitation of an inar- 
ticulate sound, to the toneless pronunciation of a 
syllable as a conventional sign, may be observed 



20 NURSERY NAMES. 

ill our nurseries at tlie present day. The nurse 
imitates the lowing of an ox or the bleating of a 
sheep by the syllables moo or baa pronounced in a 
tone resembling the cry of the animal, while she 
points to the animal itself or to a picture of it, as 
the object she wishes to associate with the utter- 
ance in the mind of her pupil. The use of the 
imitative tone speedily becomes unnecessary, and 
the simple pronunciation of the syllables moo 
or baa (with or without the addition of cow or 
lamb,- which add nothing to the significance) is 
sufficient to bring the animal before the mind of 
the infant, or to make him think of it. Thus moo- 
coiv and baalamb become the names of the cow and 
the sheep in nursery language ; boicicoiCj of the 
dog. In German nurseries maukatt is the cat 
(Danneil) ; icauhund or tvouwouhund, the dog 
(Bremisch Worterbuch) ; in Swabia muh, the 
cow, mah, the goat (Schmid). In Switzerland 
haaggen is to bleat, baaggeli (in nursery language), 
a lamb. So in French infantile language coco is 
an Qg^, in Magyar, kulilw, in Bavarian, gaggele or 
gagkelein, from gagk ! gagk ! the clucking of the 
hen. 

The universal adoption of the principle of imi- 
tation as the first means of oral communication 



muller's objection 21 

witli infants is the best illustration of its fitness 
for tlie origination of language in the infancy of 
man. But it is revolting to the pride of philo- 
sophy to admit so simple a solution of the pro- 
blem. " I doubt," says Miiller, speaking of words 
formed on the bowwow principle, "whether it 
deserves the name of language." " If the principle 
of onomatopoeia is applicable anywhere it would 
be in the formation of the names of animals. 
Yet we listen in vain for any similarity between 
goose and cackling, hen and clucking, duck and 
quacking, sijarroio and chirping, doce and cooing, 
hog and grunting, cat and mewing, between dog 
and barking, yelping, snarling, and growling. 
TTe do not speak of a bowwow, but of a dog. We 
speak of a cow, not of a moo ; of a lamb, not of a 
baa."— Lect. p. 363. 

I^ow, in the first place, when once it is admitted 
that any animals are named from direct imitation 
of their cries_, it affords a conclusive argument for 
the validity of the principle of imitation in the 
origination of language, which, will in no degree 
be impugned although it may be shown that the 
names of all the domestic animals are not imme- 
diately derived from this source. It is only in 
the first infancy of language that names are ne- 



22 SIGNIFICANT NAMES. 

cessarily taken from direct imitation. As soon 
as language is a little developed, tlie animal may 
be named from some peculiarity of form or colour, 
or other physical or moral character^ and it is an 
undoubted fact that many animals are so named. 
The hare is in Welsh ysgyfarnog, the long-eared, 
while he was formerly known to 6ur sportsmen 
under the name of couard, the bobtail, from Old 
French cone (Lat. cauda), a tail. Of the same 
signification is bumiy, the familiar name of the 
rabbit, from Gaelic him, a stump, whence bun- 
feaman, a bobtail. The parrot and robin, on ac- 
count of their familiarity with man, have received 
names as if they were humble companions of our 
own species ; parrot from Pierroty the French 
diminutive of Pierre, Peter, and Robin, our own 
familiar version of Eobert. Parrakeet is a repe- 
tition of the same principle from Spanish perri- 
quito, used both as a diminutive of Pedro and as 
the designation of a parrot. 

The designation of birds from varieties of colour 
is very common^ as the redbreast, whitethroat^ 
blackcap, &c. The screamer, diver, creeper, 
wagtail, woodpecker, explain their own mean- 
ing. 

On the other hand, it is equally certain that 



NAME FROM CRY. 



23 



many names are directly taken from the cry of 
the animal. He would be a bold opponent of 
onomatopoeia who denied that Sanscrit Ixokila, Lat. 
cucidus, Gr. kokkv^, Germ. kucH'icck, and Eng. 
cuclioo, are imitative of the well-known cry which 
we hail as the harbinger of Spring. MilUer also 
admits that Sanscrit Tcuhkuta, Fin. IcuK'Jm, Esthonian 
kikhas, and English cock, are from direct imita- 
tions of the crowing of the bird. The Malay has 
kukuky to crow, and the sound is represented in 
German by the syllables kikeriki! in French, 
coquericot ! or coqnelicot ! in English, coch-a-doodh- 
doo ! The Algonquin name of the bird, pah-pah- 
ah-quau, is manifestly a representation of the same 
kind. In like manner Lithuanian gaidys, a cock, 
is from gedoti, to sing, to crow. The root of 
Latin gdllus, Lettish gaiJis, is preserved in Old 
!N^orse gcda, to cry, howl, sing, crow. 

The plaintive cry of the peewit is with no less 
certainty represented in the names by which the 
bird is known in different European dialects, in 
which we recognize a fundamental resemblance in 
sound with a great variety in the particular con- 
sonants used in the construction of the word ; 
English peewit, Scotch peeweip, teeivhoop, tuquheit, 
Dutch kievit, German kiehitz, Lettish kiekuts, 



24 NAME FROM CRY 

Swedish Jcotvipay French dishuit, Arabic tatwit. 
The consonants t, p, k, produce a nearly similar 
effect in the imitation of inarticulate sounds, and 
when an interchange of these consonants is found 
in parallel forms (that is, synonymous forms of 
similar structure), either in the same or in related 
dialects, it may commonly be taken^as evidence 
that the imitative force of the word has been felt 
at no distant period. The note of a dove, which is 
represented with an initial k in Dutch koiren, to 
coo, is sounded with an initial t in Lat. turtiu\ 
Albanian toiirra, a dove. 

The appropriation of certain verbal forms to 
represent the notes of particular animals is very 
arbitrary. The German verb kr alien and English 
crow are by "usage confined to the voice of the 
cock, while the cry of the bird,, which we call 
crow and the Germans krdhe, is expressed by the 
verb to croak, identical with Gothic hrukjan, to 
crow like a cock. The relation between the name 
of the bird and the designation of its cry is better 
preserved in Dutch kraeyen, to caw or croak, and 
kraeye^ a crow ; Lithuanian kraukti, to croak, 
krauklys, a crow ; Polish krukad, to croak, kruk 
(North English crouk), a crow. In the same way 
we have Gaelic roc, cry hoarsely, and rocas, a 



OF ANIMALS. 25 

rook or crow. The syllable caw, by wbich we 
represent the voice of the rook and daw, shows the 
imitative origin of the names by which birds of 
the crow kind are known in many languages, as 
Dutch kauice, kae, Picard can, AS. ceo, E. chough, 
a daw, Algonquin " Icahkahgee, the raven,^' men- 
tioned in Longfellow's Hiawatha, Malay gdgak, 
Barabra koka, Mantchu kalia, Georgian quaki, 
Arabic ghah, Sanscrit kaka, crow. — Pictet, Origines 
Indo-Europeennes, i. 474. From the same source 
is another Sanscrit name of the bird which Miiller 
cites as an example of the fallacious derivations 
of the onomatopoeists. Karava, he says, is sup- 
posed to show some similarity to the cry of the 
raven. But as soon as we analyze the word we 
find that it is of a different structure from cuckoo 
or cock. It is derived from a root rii or kru, 
having a general predicative power, and means a 
shouter, a caller, a crier. *' Karava, explained in 
Sanscrit by kurava, having a bad voice, is sup- 
posed to be a mere dialectical corruption of krava 
or karvaJ* — Lect. p. 349. Contrast this with the 
analysis of Pictet^ who explains the word as ka- 
rava, whose voice is kd or caw, analogous to kuhu- 
rava, the cuckoo, the bird whose voice is hiiliu. 
The hooting of the owl is a note that peculiarly 



26 IMITATIVE NAMES. 

invites imitation, and accordingly it has given rise 
to a great variety of names tlie imitative character 
of which cannot "be mistaken. Thus Latin tilula 
may be compared with ulularCy or Gr. oXokv(€Lv, to 
cry loudly. In French we have hulotte from huller, 
to howl or yell, as Welsh hiccm from hwa, to hoot. 
Lat. hnho, Fr. JdhoUf It. gufo, GermaW hiiJiu, nhu, 
are all direct imitations of the hollow cry, while 
It. strige is essentially identical with screech in 
screechoivl. 

*'The cry of the owl," says Stier in Kuhn's 
Zeitschrift, xi. p. 219, *' ku-ku-ku-wa-i is in the 
south the frequent origin of the name, in which 
sometimes the first, sometimes the second part, 
and sometimes both together, are represented. 
The Turks call it hai-kush^ i. e. bird-bai, the 
Greeks kikvixls, KiKKajBrj, KovKov^a, KOKKo(3ar]j &c.'' 

The designation of insects from the humming, 
booming, buzzing, droning noises which they 
make in their flight is very common. We may 
cite Gr. ^oiJL^vkios, the humble- or biimhle-hee, or a 
gnat; Sanscr. hamWiara, bee, hamba, fly, "words 
imitative of humming " — Pictet ; German hummel, 
the drone or non-working bee ; Sanscr. druna, a 
bee, Lithuanian tranas, German drohne, a drone, 
to be compared with Sanscr. dhran, to sound, 



IMITATIVE XAMES. Zi 

German dronen, to hum, resound ; Danish. dro?ij 
din, peal, hollow noise ; Graelic dranndan, hum- 
ming, huzzing, growling, drannd-eun, a humming- 
bird. The drone of a bagpipe is the open pipe 
which keeps up a monotonous humming while the 
tune is playing. The cockchafer is known hj the 
name of the buzzard in the North of England. 

" And I eer'd un a humming away 
Like a huzzard-clock o'er my eead." 

Tennyson, Northern Farmer. 

It is in this sense that the word is to be under- 
stood in the expression " as blind as a huzzard," or 
^' as blind as a beetle,^^ from the headlong flight of f 
a cockchafer or dung-beetle, knocking against 
whafever comes in its way. The Welsh chwyrnUy 
to buzz (corresponding to Swedish hurra and E. 
whirr) J gives rise to chwyrnores^ a hornet, and pro- 
bably indicates that G. horniss and E. hornet are 
from the buzzing flight of the animal, and not 
from its sting considered as a horn. The name of 
the gnat maybe explained from 'Norse gnetta, knetta, 
to rustle, give a faint sound, Danish gnaddre, to 
grumble. The cricket is named from the creaking 
sound by which he makes his unwelcome presence 
known in our kitchens, and he is known in the 
languages of Europe by difierent onomatopoeias 



28 



IMITATIVE XAMES. 



varying to an infinite extent according to the 
fancy of the imitation. — Pictet, i. 528. Thus Lat. 
gryllus may be compared with Fr. grille?*, to creak ; 
Ereton skril with Norse shryle and Scotch sldrl, to 
speak with a loud and shrill voice ; Gr. schirke with 
E. shrike, shriek. 

The name of the marmot afford^ a striking 
instance of the way in which etymologists will 
shut their eyes to the plainest evidence of onoma- 
topoeia, if they can escape by however awkward a 
path from such a derivation. If the marmot be 
watched at feeding time at the Zoological Grardens 
it will be observed that it makes a peculiar mutter- 
ing sound which fully justifies the German de- 
signation of murmeUhier, or muttering beast, and 
the French marmotte, from marmotter, to mutter. 
Here we have the evidence of the two languages 
spoken in the Alps of Savoy and Switzerland, 
whence the knowledge of the animal would first 
be obtained, that it is named from the nature of 
the sounds which it utters ; yet Diez finds it easier 
to believe in the extraordinary coincidence that 
the names in both languages should have been 
corrupted from forms like Old High Grerman miir- 
menti, muremonto, or Grisons murmonty and ulti- 
mately from the Lat. mus montanus. 



IMITATIVE NAMES. 29 

Mr Farrar in his Chapters on Language (p. 24) 
observes that if the vocabulary of almost any 
savage nation is examined, the name of an animal 
will generally be found to be an onomatopoeia, and 
he cites from Threlkeld's Australian Grammar 
Koiig-Jco-rong, the emu ; pip-pi-ta, a small hawk ; 
hong-kong, frogs ; kiinhal, the black swan ; all 
expressly mentioned by the author as taking their 
names from their cry, No one will doubt that 
the name of the pelican karong-karong is formed 
in the same manner. Mr Bates gives us several 
examples from the Amazons. " Sometimes one of 
these little bands [of Toucans] is seen perched for 
hours together among the topmost branches of 
high trees giving vent to their remarkably loud, 
shrill, and yelping cry. These cries have a vague 
resemblance to the syllables Tocdno, Tocdno, and 
hence the Indian name of this genus of birds." — 
Naturalist on the Amazons, i. 337. Speaking of a 
cricket he says, " The natives call it tanand, in 
allusion to its music, which is a sharp resonant 
stridulation resembling the syllables ta-na-nd, 
ta-na-ndf succeeding each other with little inter- 
mission." — i. 250. We may compare the Arabic 
tantajiat, sound, resounding of musical instruments. 
— Catafogo. The Algonquin kos-kos-koo-oo, the 



30 IMITATIVE NAMES 

owl, may be compared with modern Greek koJc-ko- 
va-ee, Walachian Jcu-kii-veike. 

There is so natural a tendency to name an 
animal, when first we become acquainted with it, 
from any marked peculiarity of cry, that it would 
not be surprising if occasions were found where 
the principle was extended to the ^^uman race. 
Now there is nowhere probably on the surface of 
the earth a more singular peculiarity than the 
clicks which characterize the languages of Southern 
Africa. In consequence of these the language of 
the natives would appear to the first Dutch colon- 
ists of the Cape of Good Hope to be all hot and tot, 
in Dutch hot en tot, whence the name of Hottentots 
seem to have been given to the people themselves. 
Dapper, who wrote previous to 1670, asserts that 
the name was given on account of the lameness of 
their speech. *' In all discourse, " he says, "they 
cluck like a broody hen, seeming to cackle at every 
other word, so that their mouths are almost like 
a rattle or clapper, smacking and making a great 
noise with their tongues." — Africa, Ogilvie's trans. 
p. 595. 

In the case of the domestic animals it is by no 
means true, as Miiller supposes, that names formed 
on the principle of onomatopoeia are confined to 



OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 31 

nursery language. Of course tliere is no resem- 
blance between hog and grimtj but the snorting 
sounds emitted by a pig may be imitated at least 
as well by the syllables hoc'h ! lioc^li I (giving the 
c'h a guttural and nasal sound) as by grunt. In 
evidence of the aptness of this imitation, we may 
cite the cry used in Suffolk in driving pigs, remem- 
bering that the cries addressed to animals are 
commonly taken from noises made by themselves. 
'' In driving, or in any way persuading this 
obstinate race, we have no other imperative than 
hooe ! hooe ! in a deep nasal, guttural tone, ap- 
propriately compounded of a groan and a grunt." — 
Moor's Suffolk words, in v. sus-sus. Hence Breton 
lioclia, to grunt, and lioc^li, houc^h, W. hivchj a 
hog, leaving little doubt as to the imitative origin 
of the E. name. In like manner we find Lappish 
snorkesefj to grunt, undoubtedly imitative, and 
snorke, sl pig ; Fin. naskia, to smack like a pig in 
eating, and naski^ a pig. Moreover, although 
the imitation embodied in Lat. gnmnire, Fr. 
grogner, and E. grunt, does not produce a name of 
the animal itself, it gives rise to It. grugno, Fr. 
groin. Pro v. E. grunny, the snout of a pig, and 
thence groin, the snout-shaped projections running 
out into the sea, by which the shingle of our 



32 IMITATIVE XA^klES 

southern coast is protected. And ob^dously it is 
equally damaging to Mliller's line of argument 
whether the onomatopcsia supplies a name of the 
animal or only of his snout. 

It requires only the most superficial examination 
to discover evidence of imitative origin in the 
names of horned cattle. The voi^e of cattle is 
represented indifferently with an initial h or m^ by 
the sjdlables hoo and moo, or haa and maa. From 
these are formed Lithuanian luhauti, to bellow like 
a buU^ JSTorse hura, Ill^Tian hukati, mukatij Zulu 
hiibiila, to bellow, low like an ox. The Greek 
jSoaoi, Latin hoai'e, to bellow, shout, although not 
specifically applied to the voice of the ox_, are from 
the same imitative sj^lable, and there is no reason 
to doubt that Greek jSouj, Latin hos, Italian hue, 
hu {hoo), ox, I^orse hu, cattle, "Welsh hu, Gaelic ho, 
Manx hooa, cow, are substantival forms from the 
same root. In the language of the Hottentots, 
says Dapper, hou is an ox ; ha, a sheep. 

Again it must be observed that verbs signifpng 
utterance of a certain sound are frequently formed 
by affixing an / to the imitative syllable. Thus 
French miauler is to cry miau, to mew ; helei-, to 
cry he, to baa or bleat. On this principle are 
formed Old I^orse haula, Swedish hola, Swiss 



OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 33 

hullen, to cry hoo, to bellow, and thence ON. hauli, 
boli huli, Welsh hwla, Lithuanian huUus, a bull ; 
ON. haula, a cow. In the same way in parts of 
England to 7nully is to cry moo, to low as a cow, 
whence mull (mooll), the name by which a North- 
amptonshire dairymaid calls her cows, and miilly- 
cow, as moo-cow in nursery language 

That rural call, come mulls ! come mulls ! 
From distant pasture grounds. — Clare. 

Among Swabian children, also, the name of molle, 
molli, mollein, is given to cows or calves. 

Again, the sound of a loud outcry is represented 
with an initial g as well as h, as in Greek yoaoi, to 
cry aloud, to lament ; Swiss gaaggen, as well as 
haaggen, to low like a hungry calf. German bellen 
or gellen, helfern or gelfern, to yelp. And so we 
have Norse gaula, to bellow, bawl, shout, to cry 
gau I goo 1 as baula, to cry ban ! boo ! Nor can 
we doubt that this mode of representing the sound 
of lowing has given rise to Sanscrit go, Hindu gao, 
ox, German kuh, and E. coio. 

The voice of a cow is commonly distinguished 
from that of a sheep or goat in our attempts at 
imitation by sounding the former with the vowel o 
or u, the latter with a or e. Thus we have Lat. 
3 



34 DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 

mugire, Gr. \xvKaoixai, to low, /xr^Kao/xai, to bleat ; 
Swabian muh, a cow in nursery language ; wz«/a, a 
sheep or goat. In England hoo or moo is used to 
represent the lowing of a cow, haa, or in Scotland, 
hae or mae^ the bleating of a sheep or lamb. 

While ewes shall bleat and little lambkins mae. — Ramsav. 

The addition of the verbal I gives Gaelic meil^ 
to cry mae^ to bleat as a sheep or lamb, showing 
the origin of the name Maily given in Scotland to 
a pet lamb or sheep, while in Greek ix-qXav (maelon), 
a sheep, the imitative form has been preserved as 
the common name of the species. 

The abrupt sound of bleating, especially in the 
case of the goat, is often represented by a final g 
or k in the imitative syllable, as in Swiss baggen, 
hmggen, to bleat, whence haaggeli (in nursery 
language), a lamb ; and Swedish hagge, a ram, has 
doubtless a similar origin. We have then Gr. 
jiTjKaofjiaL, Gael, meigeal, German maggila (Deutschen 
Mundarten, 3. 486), mekkern, Magyar mekegni, 
hekegniy hegetni, to bleat as a goat, whence must be 
explained It. hecco, the animal that cries hek, a 
buck or he-goat. 

The G. himd, dog, and E. hound^ can hardly be 
distinct from Esthonian hunt (in the oblique cases 



I 



DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 35 

hund-), wolf, the origin of which is preserved in 
the latter language in the verb hundmna, to howl, 
corresponding to Old High German hiinon, to yelp 
like a fox, and Sc. hune, to whine. The same 
confusion between the two species of animals is 
seen in the use of the word hurtta in one dialect 
of Finnish in the sense of a wolf, in another in 
that of a dog. 

The nursery names of a horse are commonly 
taken from the cries used in the management of the 
animal, which serve the purpose as well as the cries 
of the animal itself, since all that is wanted is the 
representation of a sound associated in a lively man- 
ner with the thought of the creature to be named. 

In England the cry to make a horse go on is 
gee ! and the nursery name for a horse is geegee. 
In Grermany hott is the cry to make a horse turn 
to the right ; ho, to the left, and the horse is with 
children called liotte-pard (Danneil), huttjen ho 
peerd (Holstein Idiot.). In Switzerland the nur- 
sery name is hottihuh, as in Yorkshire highty 
(Craven Grloss.), from the cry halt ! to turn a horse 
to, the right. In Finland, hmmna, the cry to stop or 
back a horse, is used in nursery language as the name 
of the animal. The cry to back a horse in TVester- 
wald is hi/f! whence houfe, to go backwards. 
3 * 



36 ANSWER TO 

The same cry in Devonshire takes the form of 
liaap 1 haap hack ! Provincial Dan. hop2)e dic^ ! 
back ! From the cry thus used in stopping a horse 
the animal in nursery language is called Ao/?/?e in 
Frisian (Outzen), ho^(py in Craven, while hilpp- 
peerdken in Holstein is a hobby horse or child's 
wooden horse. Thus we are led to the Fr. hobin, 
E. hobby, a little ambling horse, Gr. hoppe, a mare, 
Esthonian hobbo, hobben, a horse, and possibly also 
the Grr. Ittttos. In a similar manner the exclama- 
tion huss f is used in Switzerland as a cry to drive 
out a dog or to set it on to attack another animal, 
and thence huss, haiiss are used to signify a dog, 
Miau in Chinese is the name for a cat. 

. In the face of so many examples it is in vain for 
Miiller to speak of onomatopoeia as an exceptional 
principle giving rise to a few insignificant names, 
but exercising no appreciable influence in the form- 
ation of real language. "The onomatopoeic theory 
goes very smoothly as long as it deals with cackling 
hens and quacking ducks, but round that poultry- 
yard there is a dead wall, and we soon find that it 
is behind that wall that language really begins." 
— 2nd Series, p. 91. " There are of course some 
names, such as cuckoo^ which are clearly formed by 
an imitation of sound. But words of this kind are. 



MtlLLEH's CHARGE OF STERILITY. 37 

like artificial flowers, without a root. They are 
sterile and unfit to express anything beyond the 
one object which they imitate.'' " As the word 
cuckoo predicates nothing but the sound of a par- 
ticular bird, it could never be applied for express- 
ing any general quality in which other animals 
might share, and the only derivations to which it 
might give rise are words expressive of a meta- 
phorical likeness with the bird.' ' — 1st Series, p. 365. 
The author has been run away with by his own 
metaphorical language. An onomatopoeia can only 
be said to have no root because it is itself a living 
root, as well adapted to send forth a train of deriv- 
ations as if it was an ofishoot from some anterior 
stock. If a certain character is strongly marked in 
a particular animal^ the name of the animal is 
equally likely to be used in the metaphorical de- 
signation of the character in question, whether the 
name was taken from the cry of the animal or 
from some other particular. The ground of the 
metaphor lies in the nature of the animal, and can 
in no degree be afiected by the principle on which 
the name of the species is formed. Thus the 
comparison with artificial flowers becomes a trans- 
parent fallacy, which the author ought at once to 
have erased when he found himself in the same 



38 COWARD. 

page indicating derivatives like cuckold^ coquette, 
cockade, coquelicot, as springing from his tj^es of a 
lifeless stock. If onomatopoeias can be used in 
giving names to things that bear a metaphorical 
likeness to the original object, what is there to limit 
their efficiency in the formation of language ? 
And how can the indication of such dWivations as 
the foregoing be reconciled with the assertion that 
there is a sharp line of demarcation between the 
region of onomatopoeia and the " real " commence- 
ment of language ? The important question is not 
what number of words can be traced to an imita- 
tive source, but whether there is any difference in 
kind between them and other words. The num- 
ber of words that can be traced with certainty to 
the cries of animals or their names is undoubtedly 
small, although instances may be shown of words 
formed on such a principle where few suspect the 
metaphoric imagery they are using. To call a man 
a coward is at bottom the same figure which 
Achilles uses when he addresses Agamemnon as 
having the heart of a deer. Only instead of a deer 
we now take a hare as the type of timidity, to 
which the name of coward (signifyin g the bob- 
tailed) was given, as Beynard to the fox. In the 
* Yenery of Twety^ the hunter is instructed, if any of 



DUPE. 



39 



"his hounds, Kycher or Bemond, finds a hare, to 
cry out "Oieza Bemond le vayllant que quide 
trovere le coward ou le court cow'' — Hark to Bemond 
who has got scent of the bobtailed. — Eeliquiae 
Antiquae, p. 153. Kiliaan in his Dutch dictionary 
has Kuwaerd, lepus, vulgo cuardus ; ignavus, im- 
bellis, timidus. The metaphorical nature of the 
word was perhaps understood by Bishop Hall 
when he wrote : 

If some such desperate hackster shall devise 
To rouse thy harems heart from her cowardice. 

The signification of the word du2:)e is founded on a 
metaphor which conveys no meaning to us at the 
present day. Fr. dupe is a hoopoe, a bird taken 
as the type of simplicity for reasons unknown. 
The name of the hoopoe is in Polish dudek, in 
Breton houperik, both of which are used in the 
figurative sense of simpleton, guU^ dupe r 
houptriga, to deceive, to dupe. Italian hubbola, a 
hoopoe ; bubbolare, to bubble, dupe, defraud. It 
is probable that dupe, like Lat. upupa, and E. houp, 
hoopoe, is a representation of the cry of the bird. 

The principle of imitation is not less obvious in 
the words which express the sounds of inanimate 
agencies than in those applied to the cries of ani- 



40 IMITATIONS 

raals, and the operation of the principle was re- 
cognized at as early a period in the one case as in 
the other. Quintilian instances the words used by 
Homer for the twanging of the bowstring and the 
fizzing of the fiery stake in the eye of the Cyclops, 
and the occurrence of words of such a nature in 
all languages is recognized by ever^ one. The 
question as to the imitative character of a word 
will^ of course, be open to dispute in each particu- 
lar case, and it may appear self-evident to one, 
while another may be wholly unable to discern 
any resemblance in the word to the sound which 
it is meant to express. Thus the writer of a 
critique on Wilson's Prehistoric Man thinks the 
author too partial to the bowwow theory when he 
finds the mimetic element in laughs scream, hleat, 
cry, and whhnper. He asks, "What is there in 
whimper which is mimetic ? and if simper had 
been used instead, would there have been less 
onomatopoeia ? Is rire like laugh ? Yet to a 
Frenchman^ doubtless, rire seems the more ex- 
pressive of the two." It is not to be supposed 
that language should be the only subject where 
those who have never studied the matter should 
at once be able to appreciate the distinctions and 
relations brought to light by extensive comparison, 



OF NATURAL SOUNDS. 41 

but for those who have thus qualified themselves 
for judgment, none of the forms above cited will 
cause the slightest difficulty. Nor is it to be ex- 
pected that there should be always a cognizable 
resemblance between words undoubtedly imitative 
of the same sound. There is no resemblance be- 
tween 7:)o?^.' and hang ! . Yet the Frenchman uses 
the one and the Englishman the other to repre- 
sent the explosion of a gun. 

Cases may, no doubt, be adduced where an 
origin in direct imitation has been claimed for 
words which can be historically traced to ante- 
cedent elements, while in other cases the imitative 
origin is supported on such fanciful grounds as to 
afford an easy subject of ridicule in an ad captan- 
dum argument against the general theory. Never- 
theless it will be easy in every language to make 
out numerous lists of words as to the imitative 
character of which there will, in nine cases out of 
ten, be an all but universal agreement. Such are 
bang, bump, thump, thwack, whack, smack, crack, 
clack, clap, snap, rap, tap, pat, clash, crash, 
smash, swash, splash, slash, dash, craunch, crunch, 
douse, souse, whizz, fizz, buzz, whirr, hiss, hum_, 
boom, flop, flap, pop, ring, din, whine, twang, clang, 
clank, clink, chink, jingle, creak, squeak,, tinkle, 



42 INTERJECTIONS 

rattle, rustle, wMstle,, whisper, clatter, patter, 
guggle, gurgle, sputter, splutter, paddle, dabble, 
bubble, rumble. 

We must remember tbat there is a constant tend- 
ency in the cultivation of a language to the loss of 
imitative forms. JSTot only does the imitative force 
of words become obscured by gramnWtical inflec- 
tions, and by conventional applications to special 
figurative senses, but as long as it is strongly felt 
in speaking it gives the word a homely and fa- 
miliar appearance which tends to banish it from 
employment in an elevated style of composition. 

The imitative power of words is witnessed in 
the strongest manner by their use as interjections 
of sound, when, without assuming any special 
grammatical form or indicating a relation to any 
other conception, they are intended simply to 
bring the sound they represent before the mind 
of the hearer. 

" Bang, bang, bang ! went the cannon, and the 
smoke roUed over the trenches." — Read, White 
Lies (1865), iii. 175. '' Hoo, hoo, hoo ! ping, 
ping, ping ! came the bullets about their ears." — 
Ibid. 139. *'Haw, haw, haw! roared a soldier 
from the other side of the valley." *' That horrible 
sound a soldier knows from every other, the thud 



I 



OF SOUND. 43 

of a round shot striking man or horse." — Ibid. 
127. " And at it botli sides went ding, dong ! till 
the guns were too hot to be worked.^' — Ibid. 126. 
Ding-dong, for the sound of a bell ; rat-tat-tat, for 
that of knocking at a door ; tick-tack, for the beat 
of a clock; pit-a-pat, for the beating of the heart 
or the light step of a child; rub-a-duh, for the 
beating of a drum ; tantara-tantara , for the notes 
of a trumpet ; tlnvick-thicack, for the sound of 
blows, are familiar to every one. The beat of a 
drum is represented in French by the syllables 
rataplan, rantanplan ; in Piedmontese by tantan, 
tarapatapan, tarapatan ; in Italian parapatapan 
(Zalli, Yocab. Piedm.) ; in Spanish taparapatan, 
tapatan, leading to Italian tappatd (Yocab. Mi- 
lanese), from the last of which we pass to Dutch 
taptocy the immediate parent of our tattoo. The 
jangling of bells is represented in Chinese by 
tsiang-tsiang, in Manchu by tang-tang ; the clank- 
ing of chains in the latter language by kiling- 
kiling, identical with the German interjection 
kling-hling, which Griebe, in his Germ.-Eng. 
Dictionary, renders by jingle ! ding-ding ! ting ! 
From the same imitation is the verb klingen, to 
clink, tingle, also to sound. The sough of the 
wind to a Chinese ear sounds siao-siao, the lum- 



44 IM1TATI0^'S 

bering of waggons, Ihi-Un. — Miiller, 1st Series, p. 
368. The sound of a drum is represented by the 
syllable torn in the Indian name of the implement, 
tomtom. The same sj^llable is used to represent 
the idea of noise in Hindustani tumul, uproar, 
tumult ; in Lat. tum-iiUus, disturbance ; and in 
W. tymmestl (pronounced tummestlyy sl tempest. 
In a list given by Latham of imitative words be- 
longing to a jargon spoken by the half-breds in 
Oregon is ttim, a heavy noise ; tum-wata (falling 
water), a cataract. — Varieties of Man, 322. The 
same imitation gives rise to Fr. tomher and E. 
tumble. In the language of the Gallas bilbila 
represents the ringing sound of a bell, illustrating 
the imitative origin of 01^. bialla and E. hell, as 
well as of the ^oxdi. peal, signifying a loud clear 
noise ; a peal of bells, a peal of laughter. It is 
applied to the clear notes of a singing-bird in 
Albanian bilbil, Turkish billbul, a nightingale, 
reminding us of Diomede^s " tinnire aves." The 
Susu (Western Africa) nimnim, to taste (repre- 
senting the sound of smacking the lips), and Zulu 
nambeta, to smack the lips, to have a taste, to 
relish, may be compared with Swedish namnam, 
a tidbit, a sugar-plum. A similar agreement is 
shown in Galla djamdjamgoda (to make djam 



OF NATURAL SOUNDS. 45 

djam)y Magj^'ar csammogni, csamcsogni, to champ, 
to chew, with the sound represented by these words. 
In Hindustani the same sound is represented by 
chajmrchapar. The Turcoman qalabdlac'h (F. New- 
man), Turkish karabalik, uproar, disturbance, are 
nearly identical with E. hullabaloo ; Zulu hom- 
holaza with Gr. (SoplSopvCco, to murmur, rumble. 
Thus the imitation of natural sounds occasionally 
reproduces the same or closely resembling forms 
in the most distant languages. So close an agree- 
ment, however, between the results of independent 
imitation is comparatively rare, and the formation 
of words on this principle is compatible with a 
total difference in the syllables by which the same 
sound is represented even in nearly-related dialects. 
The explosion of a gun is represented in French 
by the syllable, J90?(// in English by hang! To 
neigh as a horse is expressed by Fr. hennir, It. 
nitrire, Spanish rinchar, relinchar, Swedish wrena^ 
wrensJta, German wiehern, frenschen, Dutch run- 
nikeUy ginniken, brieschen, Lettish sweegt, words be- 
tween many of which we cannot catch a glimpse 
of resemblance, although it cannot be doubted 
that they all take their rise in an attempt at direct 
representation of the sound of neighing. 

The use of interjections of sound in German is 



46 NATURAL SOUNDS. 

very common. The following are cited by Grimm 
(Grrammar, iii. 307) as imitating the sound 
made by certain objects in falling, whirling, 
snatching, breaking : plump, platsch, hratsch, 
patsch, klatsch, witsch, husch, klapps, ripsraps, 
scJiwapps, him, ham, hum, zink, fitsche, fatsche (for 
blows with a rod), strip, strap, sf^^oll (for the 
sound of milking), &c. The Bremisch Worter- 
buch explains klapp as a direct imitation of the 
sound of a blow. *' He kreeg enen an de oren : 
klapp, segde dat : " he caught it on the ears : 
clap ! it cried. Kiittner, in his German Diet., 
calls knack "an undeclinable word that imitates 
the sound that a hard body makes when it breaks 
suddenly, in which also knucks is usual. Knack, 
da war es enzwey : there ! ^tis broken. Es thut 
einen knack : it gave a crack." 



47 



CHAPTER III. 



INTERJECTIONS. 



From the interjections of sound we naturally- 
pass to the interjections of passion, which very 
unphilosophically have been supposed to exemplify 
an essentially different principle of language. 
The only difference is that in the interjections of 
passion the sense is carried on a stage further, 
and the intention of the utterance is to bring 
before the mind of the hearer, not so much the 
cry or other sound immediately represented by 
the interjection, as a certain condition of the mind 
of which the imitated sound is the physical ac- 
companiment. The interjection ah ! is an imi- 
tation of a cry of pain ; and when I cry ah ! my 
object is to represent myself to my hearers as 
suffering pain, that is, to lead them to think of me 
as suffering pain. The part performed by inter- 
jections in the development of speech has been 



48 ERRONEOUS VIEWS. 

greatly misunderstood, as if the interjection was 
itself tlie original cry cliaracteristic of a particular 
passion, instead of a voluntary imitation, uttered 
with, the intention of representing such a cry to 
the imagination of another, and of thereby making 
known to him the internal condition of the 
speaker. Thus !Miiller says : " Two^theories have 
been started to solve the problem [of the ultimate 
nature of roots], which for shortness^ sake I shall 
call the Bowwow theory and the Poohpooh theory. 
According to the first, roots are imitations of 
sounds ; according to the second, they are mvolim- 
tary interjections.^^ — 1st Series, p. 344. And 
again, " There are no doubt in every language 
interjections, and some of them may become tra- 
ditional, and enter into the composition of words. 
But these interjections are only the outskirts 
of real language. Language begins where inter- 
jections end. There is as much difference be- 
tween a real word such as to laugh, and the in- 
terjection ha! ha! as there is between the 
involuntary act and noise of sneezing and the 
verb to sneeze.^' ^' As in the case of onomatopoeia, 
it cannot be denied that with interjections too 
some kind of language might have been formed ; 
but not a language like that which we find in 



OF INTERJECTIONS. 49 

numerous varieties among all tlie races of men. 
One short interjection may be more powerful, 
more to the point, more eloquent than a long 
speech. In fact, interjections, together with 
gestures, the movements of the muscles, of the 
mouth, and the eye, would be quite sufficient 
for all purposes which language answers with 
the majority of mankind. Yet we must not 
forget that hum ! ugh ! tut ! pooh ! are as little 
to be called words as the expressive gestures 
which usually accompany these exclamations." 
— p. 369 — 371. And to the same effect he cites 
from Home Tooke. " The dominion of speech is 
founded on the downfall of interjections. With- 
out the artful intervention of language mankind 
would have had nothing but interjections with 
which to communicate orally any of their feelings. 
The neighing of a horse, the lowing of a cow, 
the barking of a dog, the purring of a cat, 
sneezing, coughing, groaning, shrieking, and 
every other involuntary convulsion with oral 
sound, have almost as good a title to be called 
parts of speech as interjections have. Voluntary 
interjections are only employed where the sudden- 
ness and vehemence of some affection or passion 
return men to their natural state and make 
4 



50 TRUE NATURE 

them forget tlie use of speech, or when from some 
circumstance the shortness of time will not permit 
them to exercise it." — Diversions ofPurley, p. 32. 
When the words of Tooke are cited in opposition 
to the claims of interjections to be considered as 
parts of speech, it should be remembered that to 
say that the cries of beasts have almost as good a 
title to the name of language as interjections 
is practically to recognize that some additional 
function is performed by interjections, and the 
difference thus hazily recognized by Tooke is, in 
truth, the fundamental distinction between in- 
stinctive utterance and rational speech. 

If words are articulate sounds uttered with the 
intention of convepng a meaning to the mind of 
others, then 2^ooJi ! and iigh ! by which I express 
contempt or horror, have as good a right to the 
name of words as the Latinized terms used to 
signify the emotions in question. 

The error arises from confounding the inter- 
jection with the instinctive expression of feeling 
which it represents in some cases. But the inter- 
jection ah ! is as distinct from the groan of pain 
which it represents, as the syllables coch-a-doodle- 
doo from the cry of the cock, or the interjection 
haha ! from a burst of laughter. It is not speak- 



OF INTERJECTIONS. 51 

ing wlien a groan of agony is wrung from me, but 
when I imitate a groan by the interjection ah! 
for tbe purpose of obtaining the sympathy of my 
hearer, then speech begins. So when I am hum- 
ming and hawing I am not speaking, but when I 
cry hum ! to signify that I am at a loss what to 
say, it is not the less language because my mean- 
ing is expressed by a single syllable. It is purely 
accident that the syllables haha, by which we in- 
terjectionally represent the sound of laughter, have 
not been retained in the sense of laugh in the 
grammatical part of our language, as is actually 
the case in some of the ISTorth American dialects, 
for example, in the name of Longfellow's heroine 
Minnehaha, explained as signifying the laughing 
water. In a vocabulary from British Columbia 
also hihi is given as the word for laugh. 

The principle which gives rise to the interjec- 
tion is precisely the same as that which has 
been so largely illustrated in the naming of animals. 
If I wish to convey to a person of unknown 
language the idea of a cow, I imitate the lowing 
of the animal, and in the same way when I wish 
him to know that I am in pain^ or to think of me 
as suffering pain, I imitate the cry which is the 
natural expression of suffering. And as the ut- 
4 * 



52 INTERJECTIONS 

terance used ia the designation of animals speedily 
passes from the imitative to the conventional 
stage, so it is with the interjections used to express 
varieties of human passion, which are frequently- 
used in total unconsciousness of the principle to 
which their power of expression is due. Miiller 
admits that some of our words sprang From imita- 
tion of the cries of animals and other natural 
sounds, and others from interjections, and thus, he 
says, some kind of language might have been 
formed, which would be quite sufficient for all the 
purposes which language serves with the majority 
of men, yet not a language like that actually 
spoken among men. But he does not explain in 
what fundamental character a language so formed 
should differ from our own, nor can he pretend to 
say that the words which originate in interjections 
are to be distinguished from others. 

To admit the mechanism as adequate for the 
production of language, and yet to protest that it 
could not have given rise to such languages as our 
own, because comparatively few of the words of 
our languages have been accounted for in this 
principle, is to act as many of us may remember 
to have done when Scrope and Lyell began to ex- 
plain the modern doctrines of Geology,. "We could 



A SOUND FOUNDATION OF LANGUAGE. 53 

not deny the reality of the agencies which those 
authors pointed out as in constant operation at the 
present day on the frame-work of the earth, de- 
molishing here, and there re-arranging over areas 
more or less limited ; but we laughed at the sup- 
position that these were the agencies by which the 
entire crust of the earth was actually moulded into 
its present form. Yet these prejudices were 
gradually dispelled by patiently working out the 
problem in detail, and in the same way we must 
answer such a protest as that of Miiller by ad- 
ducing repeated instances where interjections have 
unquestionably made their way into the gram- 
matical parts of language. 

The signification of interjections is of the 
simplest kind that can belong to words, being dis- 
tinguished merely by the absence of characters, 
the addition of which constitutes a verb or a noun. 
The office of an interjection in its widest sense is 
simply to suggest a certain phenomenon to the 
thoughts of the hearer, as when I say. Bang ! 
Bang! went the guns. When the signification 
includes in addition the idea of action, the word 
becomes a verb, as when I say, Do not bang the 
door, do not do something to the door that will 
produce the sound hang ! When the phenomenon 



54 



VERBS FORMED 



is considered as the subject or tlie object of action, 
it becomes a noun, as when I say. He gave the door 
a bang. This analysis of the verbal signification 
is clearly shown in the language of the Gallas, 
where verbs are formed by adding djeda, to say, 
or goday to make or do, to the imitative or inter- 
jectional form representing the sound by which 
the action is characterized. Thus the sound of a 
crack is represented by the syllables cacdk (where 
the c stands for a clicking sound) ; the chirping of 
birds by the syllable tirr or trrr ; the soimd of 
beating by dadada ; and cacak djeda (to say cacah) 
is to crack ; tirrdjeda or trrr djeda, to chirp ; 
dadada goda (to make dadada !) to beat, to make a 
noise ; djamdjam goda, to smack or make a noise 
with the mouth as swine in eating, to champ in 
eating. The German cry of pain weh ! oh ! ah ! 
is used in an analogous manner in the compounds 
wehthun (to do ah !), to do something that causes 
pain, to ache^ hurt, smart ; wehschreien, icehklagen, 
to cry weh ! to lament. In the Mantuan dialect 
far pi pi is to peep or cheep like a chicken. 

The construction of the word is hardly less 
evident in such cases as the following, where the 
interjection is united with the ordinary affixes of 
verbs and nouns, with or without the cement of 



I 



FROM INTERJECTIONS. 55 

certain subsidiary particle or consonantal sounds, 
as ol or ely l, n, z in Grreek_, ka in the Slavonic 
tongues. A groan of pain is represented by an 
interjection which varies Kttle over a wide range 
of languages : Grreek ovai, Latin vcb, It. guai. Old 
Norse vei, Danish vee, German icehe, weh, Lettish 
and Illyrian tvai. The E. woe is the same word, 
although it is not used by itself as a simple inter- 
jection, but has passed on to signify the condition 
of the person who utters the cry. In the sentence 
woe is me ! however, we may recognize the same 
interjectional use of the word as that of hang in 
such a sentence as, bang ! went the guns. The G. 
weh also is used as a noun with the sense of ache, 
bodily pain, grief, misfortune, misery ; and it 
enters freely into the composition of other words : 
Ixopfweh, headache ; wehmuth, sorrow ; weliMagen, 
to lament, &c. In Italian we have giiaire, 
guaiolare (to cry guai !), to wail, lament, howl ; 
guajo, crying, wailing, misfortune, woe ; in Norse 
veia, ON. veina (to cry vei !), to lament or cry for 
pain, explaining G. tceinen, to weep, and the 
Devonshire ween^ to whimper, to cry. The E. 
wail and "Welsh wylo, to wail, to weep or cry, are 
analogous forms to the It.guaiolaredihoYQ mentioned, 
or to Fr. miaider, to cry miau. In Lettish 



5Q FERTILITY 

ivaiman ! Gr. otjuot / we have composite forms in 
which the speaker expressly refers the suffering to 
himself, corresponding to our own analytic woe is 
me ! ; from whence are derived Lettish imimanat^ 
Gr. oi/xcofeti;, to lament, waimanaSy lamentation. 
The Illyrian umkati, to express sorrow, is formed 
on the same plan as ishkati, to cry zsh K (equivalent 
to E. shoo !) for scaring birds ; Jaiikati, to cry jao ! 
alas, to lament; huhati, to cry hu! to sigh or 
moan. 

A different representation of the cry of pain 
gives German ach I Welsh och ! E. ah ! oh ! 
Gaelic ach ! och ! ochan ! Irish ochone ! Italian ah ! 
ahi! expressive of pain and grief. Hence German 
acheiiy achzen, Welsh ochi, to groan; och^ ochan, 
Gael, acain, a groan, a moan, explaining Fr. ahan, 
hard labour, pain, toil ; ahaner, to toil ; It. affanno, 
trouble, grief. From representing the cry which 
is the natural expression of pain, the signification 
is transferred (as we have already seen in the case 
of G. iveK) to the sense of pain and grief, in Gr. 
axo<i, and in E. ache, used indifferently as verb and 
noun. My head aches ; I have a headache. Gael. 
acaid, a sharp pain ; acaideach, groaning, painful. 
The utterance of an interjection of pain, when 
standing alone, would indicate that the speaker 



OF INTERJECTIONS. 57 

liimself was suffering, but the interjection is occa- 
sionally used in connection with other words 
which attribute the suffering to a different person. 
The Latin Vce tihi I is a threatening of woe to the 
person addressed, it is an indication to him that 
he may look out for suffering on such, and such 
conditions. Vce metis ! expresses the sense which 
the speaker entertains of the wretched condition of 
the conquered. On other occasions the speaker 
wishes emphatically to indicate himself as the 
suffering person, when he expressly mentions him- 
self in connection with the interjection, as in Lat. 
Hei mihi ! E. Ah me ! Spanish Ay di mi ! 
After a while the interjection coalesces with the 
personal pronoun in a single word having the 
exact signification of the first person present of a 
verb. The Gr. ot/xot / or It. oliimel is uttered for 
the purpose of leading the person addressed to 
think of the speaker as suffering pain, or, in other 
words, the signification of the complex interjection 
is the same as if the speaker had said, I am in pain 
or grief, I suffer, I grieve. In Italian the con- 
jugation is carried through the whole of the singu- 
lar number : Oliitu ! alas for thee ! thou art to 
be pitied ! thou art in pain. Ohise, alas for him ! 
he suffers. Moreover the form of the expression 



58 FORMATION OF WORDS 

all me ! or ohime ! agrees so exactly witli tliat of 
tlie Greek verb axo/otat, I mourn, bewail myself, 
as to afford an excellent illustration of the way in 
■which, it is universally supposed that the verbs 
"were really formed, viz. by the coalescence of a 
root with the remains more or less mutilated of the 
personal pronouns, with or without tiie addition of 
other particles significant of time or other inci- 
dents of action. 

We are taught to regard the Chinese of the 
present day as having preserved, with little essential 
change, the condition in which all language must 
have begun, when every syllable had a separate 
signification, which was successively presented to 
the mind in discourse^ with no other connection 
than the order of utterance. Thus the Chinese 
sound ta, without any change of form, means great, 
greatness, and to be great. If ta stands before a 
substantive it has the meaning of an adjective. 
Thus tafii means a great man. If ta stands after 
it is a predicate, or as we should saj^, a verb. Thus 
fa ta would mean, the man is great. — ^Miiller 1st 
Series, p. 255. 

The sense of the locative case is expressed in 
Chinese by adding such words as cung, the middle, 
or neif inside, as huO'Cimg, in the empire. The in- 



FROM INTERJECTIONAL FORMS. 59 

strumental is expressed by tlie preposition y, which, 
is an old verb meaning to use ; as y ting (use stick), 
with, a stick, where in Latin the ablative would be 
found, in Greek the dative. At a later stage the 
subsidiary element is slurred over in pronunciation, 
and ultimately worn down into the shape of a mere 
grammatical inflection^ while the element signifying 
the principal object of discourse, with little or no 
alteration, takes the place of root in an inflected 
verb or noun. 

However complicated, says Miiller, the declen- 
sions may be in Greek and Latin, we may be cer- 
tain that they were originally formed by this sim- 
ple method of composition. Thus everything in 
language becomes intelligible except the roots, and 
the only portion of the problem that remains to be 
solved is this : How can we account for the roots 
which form the constituent elements of human 
speech ? 

Now as far as the root ach, signifying pain and 
grief, is concerned, it is not easy to see what the 
derivation from the natural cry of pain leaves to 
be desired. It is a patent fact that violent pain 
is accompanied by groans and cries represented in 
a wide range of languages by interjections like G. 
well ! and ach ! while it is in accordance with the 



60 ACHE FROM ACh! 

only principle of language which we do understand, 
that an object should be named from the most 
striking sound with which it is associated. If at 
the present day we had to originate a vocal sign of 
pain, or had to signify to a person of unknown 
language that we were in pain, it is certain that 
we should imitate the cry of a pe^on in pain. 
Practically we see the principle acted on in the use 
of weh, the German interjection, in the sense of 
pain, while the plural loehen is typically applied 
to the pains of childbirth, which are in Scotch 
called a woman's groaning. "Why then should we 
doubt that the use of the other form of the inter- 
jection ach! in a similar manner has been the 
origin of the root into which we are inquiring ? 

To shut our eyes to the relation between the use 
of the root ach in the sense of pain, and the aptness 
of the syllable to represent the natural cry of 
pain, and to explain the meaning of the root by a 
hypothetical connection between the sense and 
sound implanted by the Creator in the mind of 
the primitive man, would be to reason like one 
who doubted that the fossils of Monte Bolca were 
the remains of fishes, which once swam in the basin 
of the Mediterranean, and regarded them as sports 
of I^ature originally created, as we see them at the 



UGH ! UH ! HU ! OUF ! 61 

present day, in the rocks in which they are found. 

UGH ! OUF ! 

The effects of cold and fear on the human frame 
closely resemble each other. They check the 
action of the heart and depress the vital powers, 
producing a convulsive shudder, under which the 
sufferer cowers together with his arms pressed 
against his chest, and utters a deep guttural cry, 
the vocal representation of which will afford a 
convenient designation of the attitude, mental or 
bodily, with which it is associated. Hence, in the first 
place, the interjection ugh ! (in German uh ! hu ! 
in French ouf !) expressive of cold or horror, and 
commonly pronounced with a conscious imitation 
of the sound which accompanies a shudder. Then 
losing its imitative character the representative 
syllable appears under the form of ng or ling, as 
the root of verbs and adjectives indicating shudder- 
ing and horror. Thus ug or houge was formerly 
used in the sense of shudder at, feel abhorrence at. 

The rattling drum and trumpet's tout 
Delight young swankies that are stout ; 
What his kind frighted mother ugs 
Is musick to the sodger's lugs. 

Jamieson, Sc. Diet. 



62 ugh! ugly. 

In a passage of Hardy ng cited by Jamieson it is 
related how tlie Abbess of Coldinghame having 
cut off her own nose and lips for the purpose of 
striking the Danish ravishers with horror, — 

" Counselled al her systers to do the same 
To make their foes to houge so with the sight. 
And so they did, afore the enemies came 
Eche-on their nose and overlip full right 
Cut off anon, which was an hovgly sight." 

Here, as Jamieson observes, the passage clearly 
points out the origin of the word ugly as signify- 
ing what causes dread or abhorrence, or (carrying 
the derivation to its original source) what makes 
us shudder and cry ugh ! 

Ugh ! the odious ugly fellow. 

Countess of St Albans. 

It may be observed that we familiarly use frightful 
or dreadfully ugly for the extreme of ugliness. 
The radical syllable is compounded with a different 
termination in Scotch tigsome, what causes horror. 

The ugsoyneness and silence of the nycht 
In every place my sprete made sore aghast. 

Douglas, Virgil. 

From the same root are ON. tigga, to fear, to 
have apprehension of ; iiggrj fright, apprehension ; 



^iggwy 



HUG, HUGE. 63 

uggligr, friglitful, threatening ; uggsamr, timorous. 
Then as things of extraordinary size have a tend- 
ency to strike us with awe and terror, to make us 
houge at them (in the language of Hardyng) the 
term huge is used to signify excessive size, a fearful 
size. The connection of the cry with a certain 
bodily attitude comes next into play, and the word 
Img is applied to the act of pressing the arms 
against the breast, which forms a prominent fea- 
ture in the shudder of cold or horror, and is done 
in a voluntary way in a close embrace or the like. 
The same root is seen in Dutch huggheren, to 
shudder or shiver. — Kiliaan. 

GR. /3a/3at ! LAT. BAB^ ! PAPJE ! 

The manifestation of astonishment or absorp- 
tion in intent observation, by the instinctive open- 
ing of the mouth, is familiar to every one. 

I saw a smith stand with his hammer — thus. 
The whilst his iron did on his anvil cool. 
With open mouth swallowing a tailor's news. 

K. John. 

The cause is probably the fact that we hear better 
when the air which carries the sound is freely 
admitted within the jaws, in consequence of the 
internal connection between the mouth and ears. 



6-i EXPRESSION OF WONDER. 

Hence it seems that when our faculties are taxed 
to the utmost in the observation of an object of 
wonder, the mouth instinctively opens in order to 
catch the slightest sound that may proceed from 
the object, and the parting lips seem to give utter- 
ance to the syllable ha which thence is found as 
the root of words in the most distant languages 
signif^dng wonder, intently observe, watch, ex- 
pect, wait, remain, endure, or (passing from the 
mental to the bodily phenomenon) gape or open 
the mouth, and thence open in general. The 
repetition of the syllable ba ! ha ! gives the inter- 
jection of wonder in Grreek and Latin, l3a(3aL ! 
babae ! papse ! The exclamation ba ! is used in the 
]S"orth of France in a similar manner, according to 
Hecart (Diet. E-ouchi), and the same author ex- 
plains bahaie as one who stares with open mouth, a 
gaping hoohy. "Walloon hawi, to gaze with open 
mouth (Grandgagnage) ; cshawi, Old English ahaw^ 
Fr. ebaMi% ahauhir, to cause to cry ha ! to set 
agape, to astonish. 

In himself was all his state 
, More solemn than the tedious pomp which waits 
On princes, when their rich retinue long 
Of horses led and grooms besmeared with gold 
Dazzles the crowd, and sets them all afja^je.— Milton. 



EXPECTATION, ENDURANCE. 65 

In tlie remote Zulu we find hahaza, to astonisli. 
The significant syllable is strengthened by a final 
d in several of the Eomance dialects (" the d being 
in ancient Latin the regular stopgap of the 
hiatus." — Quart. Rev. No. 148), as in It. hadare, 
to be intent upon, to watch, to loiter, tarry, stay ; 
dare a hada, to observe, to watch, to wait ; shadig- 
liare, Parmesan badacciar, Provencal hadalhar, to 
yawn ; hadar, to open the mouth , gola hadada, 
with open mouth; pouerto hadiero, an open door; 
Fr. hader, to open (Yocab. de Berri) ; Catalan 
badia, Portuguese baJiia, an opening where the sea 
runs up into the land, a bay ; Breton badalein, to 
yawn ; bada, badaoui, to be stupified, dazzled, 
astonished. In France the simpler form of the 
root, without the addition of the final/?, gives Old 
Fr. baer^ baier, b^er^ to be intent upon, to hanker 
after, to gape; boiiche b^ante, a gueule bee, with 
open mouth ; bailler, to gape or yawn. Abater is 
explained by Lacombe, *^ ecouter avec etonnement, 
bouche beante, inhiare loquenti." The adoption of 
Fr. ahaier gave rise to E. abeyance y expectation, 
suspense, and Old E. abie, to remain, abide, endure. 

At sight of her they sudden all arose 
In great amaze, ne wist which way to chuse, 
But Jove all fearless forced them to aUe. — F. Queen. 
5 



66 ENDURANCE. 

Chaucer, In his translation of Boethius, uses able 
in the sense of enduring torments. The same 
transition from the sense of earnest observation 
to that of expectation or mere endurance until 
a certain end, is seen in Latin dttendere^ to ob- 
serve, to direct the mind to, and Fr. attendre, to 
expect, to wait ; and again in Italkn gtiatare, to 
look, to watch, compared with E. waity which is 
radically identical, and was itself originally used 
in the sense of look. 

Beryn clepyd a maryner, and bad hym sty on loft, 
And iveyte aftir our four shippis aftir us doith dryve. 

As the vowel of the root is thinned down from 
a to i in the series haer, hater, abater, aby, or in 
Gr. x<^^^ x^^^^j compared with Lat. Mo, to gape, 
we learn to recognize a similar series in It. badare, 
Gothic beidan, to look out for, to expect, await,, 
and E. hide, abide, to wait. The passage in Mat. 
xi. 3, which in our version is rendered "do we 
look for another, " is in AS. " we othres sceolon 
ahidan.^^ 

HUSH ! HIST ! 

• Occasions for enjoining silence would occur 
early in savage life, where hostile tribes are 
intermingled, and the safety of the nightly camp 
requires an anxious look-out for the approach of 



SILENCE. 67 

dauoer. When tlie watcher first catches the sounds 
for which his ear is on the stretch, the rustling 
of branches, or crackling of leaves under-foot made 
by the approach of strangers, the low whisper of 
subdued voices, or the sound of breath, he would 
give notice to his companions by a whispered ut- 
terance like sh ! st ! ss ! representing the rustling 
sounds which caught his ear, while the circum- 
stances of the case would give the announcement 
the effect of a warning to keep silence and listen. 
In a more developed state of language the ex- 
clamation of warning takes the shape of the in- 
terjections hush! hist! ichist ! Gaelic ms^/ Ger- 
man pst ! Danish tys ! Swedish tyst ! Fr. chut ! 
It. zitto ! which may either be used to signify 
the low whispering sounds they were originally 
meant to represent, or may be taken in the sense 
of Peace ! Be still ; do not let your breath be 
heard ; listen. Thus syllables, springing from 
imitation of a whispering sound, become the roots 
of words signifying silence, and the obviously 
connected sense of listening and thence of hear- 
ing. The Greek o-ifco^ preterite o-eo-tya, to hiss, 
signifies also, like the secondary form o-tya^,a), to 
cry hush ! to command silence, whence o-tyaco, 

Latin sileo, to be hushed or silent. The origin of 
5* 



68 LISTENING. 

our hist! is seen in Welsh hust (pronounced hist), 
a low or buzzing noise ; husting, a whisper, a mut- 
ter. — Lewis. The Scotch tvhish is explained, any 
least sound. 

Lat her yalp on, be you as calm 's a mouse, 
Nor lat your ivhish be heard into tl\e house. 

That such also is the primary meaning of It. 
%itto is apparent from such expressions as Non 
fare zitto, Non sentirse un zittOj not to let a breath 
be heard, to be mouse-still or leaf-still, as it is 
expressed in German, not to let such a noise be 
heard as the rustling of a leaf or a mouse. Zltto 
is then hushed, whist, silent ; zittire, to be silent. 
The radical meaning of the Fr. interj. chtit I hist ! 
is apparent in the derivate verb chuchoter, to mut- 
ter, and a like connection may be observed be- 
tween E. tchist ! provincially pist ! and the pro- 
vincial whister, pister, to whisper. — Halliwell. In 
imitative words the form is often varied by the | 
introduction of an / after an initial k, /?, p, /, with- ! 
out change of significance. Thus from forms like i 
whisper, whister, we pass to German flispern, ■. 
fliistern, to whisper, with the first of which must i 
be classed Anglo-Saxon wlisp, speaking imper- 
fectly, and E. lisp ; while fluster n leads imme- 



SILENCE. 69 

diately to Dutcli luysteren, to whisper, and also to 
listen ; Piatt Deutsch. lustern, OlST. hliista, to list- 
en; AS. hli/st, gehlyst, the sense of hearing. 
Thus we are brought round to our own inter- 
jectional list ! synonymous with hist ! Even Jtarh I 
with the derivative hearken, may be explained by 
the same metaphor from Old Norse hark, Bo- 
hemian hrk, noise, hrceti, to rustle, murmur. 

mum! 

The slight inarticulate sounds that are made 
with the mouth in a half-involuntary way, are 
represented by syllables like nmm, muk, miit, mus, 
mu, knuck, gny, ypv, kuk, kik, from whence are 
formed words (commonly used with a negative) 
signifying to speak low or indistinctly, to utter 
the least sound, then (with ellipse of the negative) 
to be silent and even dumb. 

The author of Piers Plowman, speaking of the 
avarice of the monks, says that you may sooner 

— mete the mist on Malvefn hills, 
Than get a mum of their mouths ere money be them shewed. 

Here mum is used in the sense of the least word a 
person can utter, from whence, by the ellipse of the 
negative, mum, silent ; mummi7ig, acting in dumb- 
show. So Latin miissare, to mutter, then to be silent. 



TO MUTE. 

The German muclcs, Danish muk, a weak half-audible 
sound, with the corresponding verbs, are chiefly- 
used with the negative to signify silence or still- 
ness. Han gav ikke en muk, en kny, he did not 
give a muk, a hiy, not the slightest sound escaped 
him. Other varieties of the syllable representing 
a slight sound are shown in Spanish, no decir 
mus ni chus ; ni mis tar ni chistar ; Italian, non 
far motto ni totto ; Gr. jjlvC^lv \xr]Te ypvC^iv ; Latin, 
ne mutire quidem, or as Lucilius has it, non di- 
cere muttum ; Dutch, noch mikken noch kikken ; 
German, nicht mix, nicht kix sagen; Swiss, 
nicht mutz thun, not to utter a syllable, to be totally 
silent. 

From fivCetv is formed fxv(TT7]pLov, the secret 
rites of the Greeks, and thence any secret or 
mystery, an idea of so abstract a nature, and so 
remote from connection with sound, as to afford a 
striking example of the capacity of the mimetic 
principle. 

From the signification of the least inarticulate 
sound of the voice is further developed the sense 
of It. motto, Fr. mot, the least element of speech, 
a word, and figuratively, a saj^ing. On the other 
hand, the ellipse of the negative gives rise to what 
appears exactly the contrary sense in Lat. mut-us, 



ENJOYMENT. 71 

dumb, as from Magyar kuk, a slight sound, kukk- 
anni (parallel with Du. kikken), to mutter, is 
formed kuka, dumb. 

If onomatopoeia can furnish, expressions for the 
ideas of endurance, of silence, and of dumbness, 
what are the significations which we can reasonably 
suppose to be beyond its reach ? 

ENJOYMENT AND DISGUST. 

The most universal and direct source of pleasure 
in animal life is the appetite for food, and it is 
accordingly from this source that are taken the 
types used in expressing the ideas of gratification 
or dislike. The savage expresses his admiration 
and pleasure by smacking his lips or rubbing his 
belly, as if relishing food or rejoicing in a hearty 
meal ; he indicates distaste and rejection by signs 
of spitting out a nauseous mouthful. Thus Peth- 
erick_, speaking of a tribe of negroes on the Upper 
^ile, says, " The astonishment and delight of these 
people at our display of beads was great, and was 
expressed by laughter and a general rubbing of 
their bellies.'^ — Egypt and the Nile, p. 448. And 
similar evidence is adduced by Leichardt from 
the remoter savages in Australia. "They very 
much admired our horses and bullocks, and par- 



72 ENJOYMENT. 

ticularly our kangaroo-dog. They expressed their 
admiration by a peculiar smacking or clacking 
with their mouth and lips.^* — Australia, p. 336. 

The syllable smack, by which we represent the 

sound made by the lips or tongue in kissing or 

tasting, is used in English, Swedish, German, 

Polish, &c., in the sense of taste. Dutch smaeck, 

taste ; smaecklic, sweet, palatable, agreeable to the 

, taste. In the Finnish languages, which do not 

[ admit of a double consonant at the beginning of 

/ words, the loss of the initial s gives Esthonian 

/ maggo, makko, taste ; maggus, makke, Finnish 

makia, sweet, well-tasting ; maiskia, to smack the 

' lips ; maisto, taste ; maiskis, a smack, a kiss, also 

relishing food, delicacies. The initial s is lost also 

in Frisian macke, to kiss. The initial consonant is 

somewhat varied without impairing the imitative 

effect in Bohemian mlaskati, to smack in eating ; 

mlaskaninay delicacies ; and in Finnish naskla, Gf. 

knafschen, to smack with the mouth in eating, 

showing the origin of Lettish naschkeht, Gr. nascheUf 

to be nice in eating, to love delicacies ; jiascherei, 

dainties. 

Again, we have seen that Leichardt employs 
the syllables smack and clack as equally appro- 
priate to represent the sound made by the tongue 



DELIGHT. ^ 73 

and palate in the enjoyment of tasty food, and in 
French, claquer de la langue is employed for the 
same purpose. We speak of a click with the 
tongue, though we do not happen to apply it to 
the smack in tasting. The Welsh has givefusglec 
(gwefus, lip), a smack with the lips, a kiss. From 
this source then we may derive Gr. yXvKvs^ sweet_, 
analogous to Du. smaecklicy Fin. makia, from the 
imitative smack. The sound of an initial c/ or gl 
is readily confounded with that of tl or ell, as some 
people pronounce glove, cllove, and formerly tlick 
was used where we now say click. Thus Cotgrave 
renders Fr. niquet, a tnicke, tlick, snap with the 
fingers. In Bavaria, according to Schmeller, tl 
and tn are locally used for gl or kl and gn, kn. 
The same combination is found in Bohemian 
tlaskati, to smack in eating, tleskati, to clap hands ; 
and Lat. stloppus, parallel with sclopus, a pop or 
click with the mouth. From the sound of a 
smack represented by the form tlick or dlick I 
would explain Lat. delicice, anything one takes 
pleasure in, delight, darling ; together with the 
cognate delicatus, what one smacks one's chops at, 
dainty, nice, agreeable, as corruptions of an 
earlier form, dlicice, dlicatus. And as we have 
supposed Gr. yXvKvs (glykys) to be derived from 



i 4 DISGUST. 

the form, click or glick, so from tUck or dlick would 
be formed dlykis or dlukis (dlucis), and ultimately 
dulcis, sweet, the radical identity or rather paral- 
lelism of which with Gr. yXvKvs has been recog- 
nized on the principle of such an inversion. 
When the sound of an initial tl or dl became 
distasteful to Latin ears, it would be slurred over 
in different ways, and dlucis would pass into dulcis 
by inverting the places of the liquid and vowel, 
while the insertion of an e in dlicice, dlicatus, as in 
the vulgar umherella for umbrella , would produce 
delicice, delicatus. It is true that an intrusive 
vowel in such cases as the foregoing is commonly 
(though not universally) short, but the long e in. 
these words may have arisen from their being 
erroneously regarded as compounds with the 
preposition de. 

POOH ! PSHAlV ! 

The attitude of dislike and rejection is typifie 
by signs of spitting out an unsavoury morsel, asj 
clearly as the feelings of admiration and pleasi 
by signs of the relishing of food. Thus Gawainc 
Douglas expresses his disgust at the way in whicl 
the harmonious lines of Yirgil were mangled b] 
incompetent translators. 



I 



DISDAIN. 75 

His ornate gold in verses mare than gilt, 
I spittefor disspite to se thame spylte 
By sic ane wicht. — 5. 44. 

^' Would to God therefore that we were come to 
such a detestation and loathing of lying that we 
would even spattle at it, and cry fy upon it and all 
that use it." — Dent's Pathway in Halliwell. The 
Swedish spott signifies spittle, and also derision, 
contempt, insult. The traveller Leichardt met 
with the same mode of expression among the 
savages of Australia. "The men commenced 
talking to them, but occasionally interrupted their 
speeches by spitting and uttering a noise like 
pooh ! pooh ! apparently expressive of their dis- 
gust." — p. 189. It is probable that this Austra- 
lian interjection was in fact identical with our own 
pooh ! and like it intended to represent the sound 
of spitting, for which purpose Burton in his African 
travels uses the native took ! " To-o-h ! Tuh ! ex- 
claims the Muzunga, spitting with disgust upon 
the ground." — Lake Eegions of Africa, 2. 246. 

The sound of spitting is represented indifferently 
with an initial p, as in Maori piihwa, to spit out ; 
Latin spuere, to spit ; respuere (to spit back), to 
reject with disdain ; despiiere, to express disgust 
or disdain ; or with an initial t, as in Arabic tufly 



76 



ANGER. 



Spittle; Galla twu ! representing the sound of 
spitting ; tufa, to spit ; tufada, to spit, to despise, 
scorn, disdain ; with which may be joined English 
tuff, to spit like a cat. In Greek Trruo) the imita- 
tion is rendered more vivid by the union of both 
the initial sounds. 

BLURT ! PET ! TROTZ ! 

The feelings of one dwelling on his own merits 
and angry at the short-comings of another are 
marked by a frowning brow, a set jaw, and in- 
flated cheeks, while the breath is drawn in deep 
inspirations and sent out in puffs through the nos- 
trils and passive lips. Hence such expressions of 
breathing vengeance, fuming with anger, swelling 
with pride ; which is a readiness to take offence 
arising from an exaggerated notion of our own 
claims to deference. 

Sharp breaths of anger puffed 
Her fairy nostrils out. — Tennyson. 

The sound of hard breathing or blowing is repre- | 
sented by the syllables 'puff, /w(/f, whiff, whence | 
a huff is a fit of ill temper ; to huff, to swell with | 
indignation or pride, to bluster, to storm. — John- i\ 
son. A representation of an angry whiff gives ■' 
rise to the "Welsh interjection wfft ! (pronounced . 



ANGER, SCORN. 77 

oq/1^), explained by Davis, vox abliorrentis et ex- 
probrantis. Wfff, a scorn or slight, a fie ; icfftiOj 
to cry shame or fie, to push away with disappro- 
bation. — Lewis. The It. bi(ffa is explained in 
Thomas' Italian Dictionary, " the despising blast 
of the mouth which we call shirping." — HalKwell. 
Brescian hofot, to breathe hard, to pufiT, especially 
with anger. — Melchiori. Then, as ill-will vents 
itself in derision, huffa, beffa, a jest, a trick ; 
heffare, to trick or cheat ; heffarsi, to laugh at ; 
hifffone, a jester, a bufibon. 

When the puff of anger or disdain is uttered 
with exaggerated feeling it produces an explosive 
sound with the lips, represented by the syllable 
blurt, which was formerly used as an interjection 
of defiance. To blurt a thing out is to bring it out 
with a sudden explosion as if spitting something 
out of the mouth. A blirt of greeting in Scotch 
is a burst of crying. Florio explains Italian 
chichere as a blurt with the mouth in scorn or 
derision. And probably the expression is often 
heightened by an unconscious representation of 
the act of spitting, as when in familiar speech we 
make use of contemptuous sounds like psh ! tsh ! 
pt ! which in written language take the form of 
the interjections pish ! psha ! tush ! and the 



78 PET. 

equivalent Old Norse putt ! Damsh pytt ! the last 
of whicli is explained by Ferrall as equivalent to 
our pshaw, tut, phoo. 

The interjection which we write pish ! psha ! 
takes the form of feiiche ! fache ! in the I^orth of 
France (Hecart. Diet. Rouchi), whence are to be 
explained such expressions as se ficlver de, to treat 
with contempt; ficher a la porte, to drive out, to 
send packing ; fichu, contemptible, poor. In Nor- 
mandy pett ! is used in a similar sense (pour im- 
poser un silence absolu — Decorde) ; pooh, nonsense ! 
The origin of this form of the interjection is seen 
in Italian petto, a blurt ; petteggiare, pettachiare, to 
blurt with the mouth or lips — Florio ; petarade, a 
noise made with the mouth in contempt.^Sadler's 
Fr. Diet. 

From this mode of expressing displeasure we 
have E. pet, a fit of, ill humour or of anger; to 
take pet, to take huff, to take offence; pettish, 
passionate,, ill-humoured ; Latin petulans, saucy, 
proud. To pet a child is to indulge it in ill- 
humour, and thence a pet, a darling, an indulged 
child or animal. Then as a child gives vent to 
his ill-humour by thrusting out his lips and mak- 
ing a snout or making a lip as it is called in 
nursery language^ a hanging lip is called a pet lip 



POUT. 79 

in the North of England. To poutj or in Devon- 
shire to poutch or poutle, in the South of France 
fa las poutos, is to show ill-humour by hanging the 
lip_, and thence pouto or poto, a lip. Then (in the 
same way that It. hiiffa, heffa, signifying in the first 
instance a blurt with the mouth, are applied to a 
trick or jest) we have Danish puds, Swedish puts 
(to be compared with Devon, poutch above men- 
tioned), Grerman ^osse, a trick. The sound of a 
contemptuous blurt or pop with the mouth is 
represented by a great variety of imitative forms, 
most of which have been used as interjections of 
scorn, defiance, or derision, and have given rise to 
words signifying derision, cheating, defrauding, 
tricking. It is in this way that pop came to signify i / 
to treat contemptuously, to cheat. 

Do you pop me off with this slight answer ? 

Beaumont and Fletcher. 

That is my brother's plea, » 

The which if he can prove, he pops me out 
At least from fair five hundred pounds a year. 

Shakspeare. 

In the same way from the representation of the 
contemptuous sound by the syllable trump, we 
speak of trumping up a story, trumping a story 
fraudulently upon one. 



80 PRIDE. 

Fortune — 
When she is pleased to trick or trump mankind. 

B. Jonson. 

Hence also French tromper, to clieat_, to deceive. 
Italian stromhare, stromhettare, to blurt with one's 
mouth, to flurt at in scorn and reproach. — Florio. 
Another mode of representing the Wnd produces 
the Old English interjections of scorn, Ftrot ! 
Tprot ! Prut! the French Triit! and German 
Trotz ! 

The Manuel des Pecches, treating of the sin of 
Pride, takes as first example the man 

— that is unbuxome all 
Ayens his fader spirital, 
And seyth Frut ! for thy cursyng, prest, 

' 1. 3016. 

Hence are formed the Old English priite, prout,\ 
now written proud, and the Northern E. prutten,\ 
to hold up the head with pride and disdain (Halli- 
well), which in the West of E. (with inversion of 
the liquid and vowel) takes the form of purt, to 
pout, to be sulky or sullen. German p)rotzen, 
DMtch. pratten, to sulk ; protzig,prat, surly, proud, 
arrogant. Then as before, passing from the figure 
of a contemptuous gesture to a piece of con- 



SCORN. 81 

temptuous treatment, we have Old Norse prettay 
to play a trick, to cheat ; prettr, a trick. 

The Italian trmcarej to blurt or pop with one's 
lips or mouth (Florio), French true, the popping 
with the lips to a horse, show the origin of Fr; trut 
(an interjection importing indignation), tush, tut, 
fy man (Cotgrave) ; as well as of German trotz, an 
interjection originally representing a blurt with 
the lips. Trotz hieten, to bid defiance ; trotzen^ 
to defy, to be forward or obstinate, to pout or 
sulk, to be proud of; trotzig, haughty, insolent, 
perverse, peevish, sulky. — Grriebe, Germ. Diet. Du. 
trotsen, ' torteuy Piatt Deutsch turn tort, daon 
(Danneil), to irritate, insult. Scotch dort, pet, 
sullen humour ; to take the dorts, to be in a pet ; 
dorty, pettish, saucy, daintj^. In the dialect of 
Valencia trotar is to deride^ to make a jest of. 

The analogy of Italian tronfare, tronfiare, to 
snort_, also to huff, snuff, or chafe with anger ; 
also to trump ; and thence tronfio, puffed or 
ruflled with chafing, as a strutting turkeycock 
(Florio), leads us to believe that the represent- 
ation of a blurt or snort of anger by the sjdlable 
trotz is the origin of German strotzen, and Eng- 
lish strut, properly to puff or swell with pride 
and anger, then simply to swell or stand out. 
6 



82 TRUDGE. 

Another application of the interjection of dis- 
pleasure has been touched on in the derivation 
of Fr. ficher a la porte^ to send packing, from 
feuche ! fiiche ! pish ! pshaw ! fudge ! When the 
superior receives a dependent with an expression 
of impatience and displeasure, it is naturally 
taken by the latter as an intimation \o take himself 
off. Thus the interjection assumes the sense of 
Off ! Begone ! giving rise to verbs signifying to 
make off, to go along as if driven, and to adverbs 
signifying off, away. So from true is formed 
Italian truccare, to send, to trudge or pack away 
nimbly (Florio) ; trucca via ! be off with you. 
The Graelic truis ! (trush) is explained by MacleodJ 
a word by which dogs are silenced or driven out 
Trus a mach ! Tims ort {machj out ; ort, upoi 
you), begone, get away. The same interjectioi 
was used in Old English. 

Lyere — was nowher welcome, For his manye tales 

Over al yhonted and yhote, trusse. 

Piers Plowman's Vision, v. 1316. 
To hete trus is an exact equivalent of the German | 
trotz hieten. It is reasonable to suppose that our J 
trudge is another version of the same imitation. 

This tale once told none other speech prevailed, 

But pack and trudge ! all leysure was to long. 

Gascoigne in Richardson. 



FAUGH ! 83 

From the same root the Yenetian dialect has 
trozare, to send away. 

FY ! FAUGH ! 

There is a strong analogy between the senses of 
taste and smel], as between sight and hearing. 
When we are sensible of an odour which pleases 
us we snuff up the air through the nostrils, as we 
eagerly swallow food that is agreeable to the 
palate ; and as we spit out a disagreeable morsel, 
so we reject an offensive odour by stopping the 
nose and driving out the infected air through the 
protruded lips, with a noise of which various re- 
presentations are exhibited in the interjections of 
disgust. " Feculent, ferruginous, and fuliginous ! " 
says a popular writer. '' How nicely these epithets 
intimate a specific impression on the olfactory 
nerves. They have a force exceeding that of ad- 
jectives, and equal to the energy of interjections. 
Piff ! Phew ! Phit ! They have all the significance 
of those exclamatory whiffs which we propel from 
our lips when we are compelled to hold our 
noses.'^— Punch, Sept. 2, 1863. 

It must be observed that the sound of blowing 

or breathing out is represented all over the world 

by the syllable pu ox fu, as in Old Norse pua, 
6* 



84 



FAUGH 1 



hettkh pust (present tense puschu), GeTman pusen, 
pusfen, pfausen, pfausten, Finnisli puhhata, pulikia^ 
pulialtaa^ Hawaii puM^ Maori pupuhi^ puMpiiliiy 
Malay piiput^ lUyrian puhati^ Gaelic puth (pro-^ 
nounced pxiK), English puff, Scotcli fuff, Magyar 
fu, * he blows, fiivni, Galla afufa, to puff, blow, 
breathe. Zulu vuta, to sound vu, to blow, to blaze ; 
futa, to blow, breathe, puff; pupuza, to puff; He- 
brew pouahh, he has blown. Sanders, in his ex- 
cellent German dictionary, explains pit ! as an 
interjection representing the sound made by blow- 
ing through the barely opened lips, and thence 
expressing (among other things) the rejection of 
anything nasty. '' Ha puh ! wie stank der alte 
mist ! " Spanish puf, pu, exclamation of disgust 
at a bad smell ; fu ! interjection of disgust. — 
Keuman. Yeneii^n puh ! fi ! interjection of one 
who is sensible of something disgusting. — 



* This representation of the sound of blowing or breathing 
may not improbably be the origin of the root/?*;, Sanscrit 
bhu, of the verb to be. The negro who is without the verb 
to be in his own language supplies its place by live. He 
says, Your hat no lib that place you put him in. — Farrar, p. 
54. A two-year-old nephew of mine would say, Where it 
live f where is it ? Now the breath is universally taken as 
the type of life. 



PUTRID, FOUL. 85 

PatriarcH. ¥rench pouah / 'Breton foeif fec'h f 
"£.. faugh I foh ! 

Faugh ! I have known a charnel-house smell sweeter. 
Beaumont and Fletcher. 

Foh ! one may smell in him a will most rank. — Shakspeare. 

Now it is obvious that tlie utterance of these inter- 
jections of disgust is the simplest and most forcible 
mode of announcing the existence of a bad smell, 
and if the interjection is accompanied by gestures 
indicating a particular object, it will be equivalent 
to an assertion that the thing stinks or is rotten. 
It will then be necessary only to clothe the sig- 
nificant syllable in verbal or adjectival forms in 
order to give rise to words signifying stink or rot. 
Thus from the form pu are derived French puer, 
Latin putere, putidiis, putris, while from a form 
corresponding to Breton foei and E. faugh, foh, are 
hsitmfoefere, and fcetichis, fetid. In like manner 
from the form fu (often spelt in English phoo ! or 
phew ! ) we have Old Norse fiiinn, rotten ; fuM, 
stench or anything stinking ; fidl, stinking, 
rotten ; fyla, stench. In the Gothic Testament the 
disciple speaking of the body of Lazarus says Jah 
fills ist : by this time he stinketh. Modern Norse 
ful, disgusting, of bad taste or smell, troublesome. 



S6 



FIE 



vexatious, angry, bitter. Han va ful aat os, he 
was enraged with us. The E. equivalent is foul,] 
properly ill smelling, then anything opposed to oui 
taste or requirements, loathsome, ugly in look, 
dirty, turbid (of water), rainy and stormy of the 
weather, unfair, underhand in the transactions of 
life. ON. Fulyrdi, foul words ; fulmenni, a scoun- 
drel. From the adjective again are derived the 
verb to file or defile, to make foul ; and filth , that 
which makes foul. 

The disagreeable impressions of smell produce a 
much more vivid repugnance than those of taste, 
and being besides sensible to all around, they 
afford the most convenient type of moral reproba- 
tion and displeasure. And probably the earliest 
expression of these feelings would occur in teach- 
ing cleanliness to the infant. The interjection fy ! 
expresses in the first instance the speaker's sense of ' 
a bad smell, but it is used to the child in such ai 
manner as to signify, That is dirty ; do not touch 
that ; do not do that ; and then generally. You have] 
done something displeasing to me, something of] 
which you ought to be ashamed. Laura Bridge- 
man, who was born deaf and blind, used to utterj 
the sound^ or fi when displeased at being touched] 
by strangers. 



FIEND. 87 

"When used in a figurative sense to express 
general reprobation the interjection often assumes 
a slightly difierent form from that which expresses 
disgust at a bad smell. Thus in English faugh ! 
or foh ! express disgust, fie ! reprobation. In 
German fuy or fy are used in the former sense^ 
pfui (Lithuanian pui, lUyrian pi) in the latter. In 
other cases the original form is used in the enlarged 
application, as in Russian fa ! Romaunsch fu ! 
fudi ! fy for shame ! shame on you ! 

The addition of verbal forms produces G.pfmen, 
^orse ft/7ie, to cry pfui or fy, to express displeasure, 
to scold ; ein fynfe hund, a scolded dog. The 
meaning is carried on a stage further in Russian 
fiikat, to abominate, detest, and Gothic fjan, ON. 
^'d, AS. fan, to hate, where the verb expresses 
the feelings which prompt the utterance of the in- 
terjection fu! fie! From the participle fijand 
are G feind, an enemy, ON. fjandi, properly an 
enemy, then as E. fiend, the great enemy of the 
human race. From the same verb are foe (ON. 
fiai ?), and feud, enmity or deadlj- quarrel. 

The aptness of the figure by which the natural 
disgust at stench is made the type of the feelings 
of hatred is witnessed by the expression of " stink- 
ing in the nostrils'" said of anything that is pecu- 



S8 mtjller's objection 

liarly hateful to us. In the same way Italian 
puzzar, or tufarj to stink, are figuratively used of 
what is odious or displeasing. " La i tufa fort, la i 
puzza fort :" that grieves him much. — Ferrari, 
Bolognese Diet. From the Welsh ffi ! fie ! an 
formed ffiaidd, loathsome, detestable ; ffleiddio, t( 
loathe, abominate, detest. 

I have dilated at greater length on the interjec- 
tions of smell, not only because they afibrd a good 
example of the application of imitative syllables 
to the expression of moral feeling, but because the 
derivation from them of words like fiend and/o?</ 
has been made by Professor Miiller the main 
ground of his attack on the interjectional origin of 
language. He argues that if such words as these 
were derived from the interjection faugh ! foh ! fie ! 
" we should suppose that the expression of con- 
tempt was chiefly conveyed by the aspirate /, by 
the strong emission of the breathing with half- 
closed lips. But fie}id is a participle from a root 
fian, to hate, in Gothic fijan ; and as a Gothic as- 
pirate always corresponds to a tenuis in Sanscrit, 
the same root would at once lose its expressive 
power. It exists, in fact, in Sanscrit as piy, to 
hate, to destroy." — I., p. 355. If there be such a 
root in Sanscrit it would tend in nc degree to 



ANSWERED. 89 

invalidate the derivation of Gothic fijan from the 
interjection fie ! For it is obvious that the idiosyn- 
cracy which induces the use of an initial p in San- 
scrit corresponding to a Gothic /, in accordance 
with Grimm's law of consonantal change, would 
have led the speakers of Sanscrit to pronounce their 
interjection of disgust and reprobation like Vene- 
tian ^z^ A / Spanish pu ! Lithuanian jt?^? / or Illy- 
rian p)^ - ^^ might then account in the most 
natural way for the use of the root piy in the sense 
of scold (which is one of those given by Lottner) 
as signifying to say pi I as Norse fi/ne, to say fy ! 
to scold. Accordingly in his second series of lec- 
tures Miiller seems to abandon his former objection, 
and to rest his opposition on the ground of appre- 
hensions that if the interjectional origin of the 
words in question were admitted '* all would be 
mere scramble and confusion ; Grimm's law would 
be broken ; and roots kept distinct in Sanscrit, 
Greek, Latin, and German would be mixed up to- 
gether. For besides jt?%j to hate, there is another 
root in Sanscrit, puy, to decay. From it we have 
Latin j:>z<s, piiteo, putridus ; Greek pyon and pytho; 
Lithuanian pulei, matter, and, in strict accordance 
with Grimm's law, Gothic fiilSi English foul'' — 
p. 93, "VYe can only answer the charge in as far 



90 EXPRESSION 

as it is explained by the instance whicli is brought 
in support of it. Now we have seen that two 
forms of the interjection have been developed ' in 
English ; phoo ! /oh ! faugh ! expressing disgust 
at a bad smell ; and fie ! expressing reprobation 
and displeasure. And it will be perceived that 
the two modifications of the English interjection 
closely correspond both in sense and sound with 
the two Sanscrit roots above mentioned. 

So far then there would be no evidence of that 
scramble or confusion which Miiller apprehends. 
The interjectional theory merely carries on the 
investigation a stage further than the analysis of 
the Sanscrit grammarians, and gives a rational 
account of the origin of the roots 7:)^^/ and ^:)ity, 
which Miiller is content to leave as ultimate facts. 

NO. ^" 

The simple negative particle ne has become 
obsolete in English, and has been replaced by 
strengthened forms, as no, corresponding to Gothic 
niaiv, never, and not, resolvable into ne whit, not a 
bit. The origin of the negative signification may 
perhaps be studied best in the bodily gestures by 
which acceptance or agreement and refusal or 
denial are so widely signified. If the negative n 



I 



OF NEGATION. 91 

can be traced to tlie same figure, wliicli accounts 
both for the expression of approval by a nod of 
the head, and of denial by a shake, the chances 
will be greatly increased that we have hit on the 
true explanation. I^ow the earliest instance in 
the life of Man when he has occasion to indicate 
acceptance or refusal is in answer to the ofier of 
the mother^s breast. If the infant is hungry he 
moves his head eagerly forwards in order to seize 
the breast with his mouth, and as soon as he is 
satiated he withdraws his mouth, and endeavours 
to avoid the breast by moving his head from side 
to side. In this earliest exercise of choice on the 
part of the infant is found a natural type of agree- 
ment or dissent, which are accordingly expressed 
by slight movements of the head, symbolical of 
those of the infant in accepting or rejecting the 
earliest proffer of food.* 

When the action which furnishes the type of 
dissent has to be symbolized in speech instead of 
gesture, the part performed by the mouth becomes 
the prominent feature of the action ; and as the 
infant closes his mouth against the breast which is 
pressed against his lips, the refusal of the offer 
may be symbolized as well by a conspicuous closure 
* Charma. 



92 HEM ! 

of tlie moutli as by the motion of the head. But 
when the voice is exei'ted with closed teeth or lips, 
it produces the sound of the letter n or m. Hence 
we may account for the use of the particle ne to 
signify negation, and possibly also of Greek \li] in 
the same sense. From ne are formed Lat. nego^ 
Fr. nie)\ Illyrian nekatij ON. neita^ nita, to say 
ne, to deny, refuse. 

HEM ! 

The last interjection that we shall notice is the 
cry of hem ! used for a variety of purposes, all 
founded in the first instance on calling the atten- 
tion of the hearer to the speaker himself. Thus 
the exclamation hem ! or ahem ! is used as a 
preparation to engage attention before we begin to 
speak ; or uttered in the course of speaking it is 
meant to retain the hearers^ attention until the 
speaker has matured his thoughts, and is thus 
equivalent to holding by the button. In Latin it 
often has the sense of lo ! Sem Davum tibi, lo 
there is Davus. Here also the primary object of 
the interjection is to call attention to the speaker 
while he points out Davus by some bodily gesture. 

The primary object is still to call attention to 
the speaker when we hon after a person in order 
to make him stop or come back. Hence German 



1 



ME. 93 

hemmen, to stop, clieck_, restrain ; ein rad kemmen, 
to drag a wheel. From the notion of stopping or 
restraining, the signification is in English extended 
to that of confining^ surrounding, and is'specially 
applied to the doubling down which confines the 
edge of a piece of cloth and hinders it from 
ravelling out, a signification whi(^h one would 
think a priori as far as any that could be devised 
from the possibility of an origin in onomatopoeia. 

ME. 

But if the primary purpose of the interjection 
hetn is to call attention to the actual presence of 
the speaker, why may it not be the origin of the 
pronoun i72e, Greek ejote, /xe, the import of which is 
simply to bring the speaker before the thoughts of 
the hearer ? Me signifies the person of the 
speaker, and in the Latin verse 

Me, me, adsum qui feci, in me convertite tela, 

the sense would in no degree be altered by reading 
the passage 

Hem! hem! adsum qui feci . 

The principle which leads to the use of the syllable 
hem in calling the attention of another to oneself, 
seems to lie in the fact that the letter m marks the 



94 ME. 

sound uttered with closed lips. "WTien I intend to 
call the attention of another to myself, I begin by 
clearing my throat in order to catch his ear, and 
then by closing my lips I seem to keep the 
utterance within myself, and to confine the sig- 
nification to what is 'within me. If an angry 
child has been put out of the robm and comes 
back for re-admittance before he has recovered his 
temper, when asked from the inside who is there ? 
instead of giving his name or saying me, he wdll 
answer by an angry roar with closed lips, sounding . 
m — m ! The sound mm thus uttered by an angry ] 
child to bring himself before the mind of another, 
is found in the language of the Bushmen as the 
pronoun of the first person, and it has been shown 
by Dr Lottner in the Philological Transactions 
for 1859, that the letters m or n are made the 
basis of the pronoun in languages scattered over 
the face of the whole earth. Thus in a list of 
ninety Negro languages the syllables ma, mau^ m<?, 
mi, mo, mu, na, ne, ni, in (or m and n as prefix), 
are found as pronoun of the first person in upwards 
of seventy instances. A similar tendency to the 
use of 771, n, or ng is found in Asia, Siberia, and 
America. 

If an imitative origin can be found for the 



PAPA, MAMMA. 95 

pronoun of the first person, there is no reason why 
those of the second and third person should not be 
accounted for on a similar principle, although we 
are not at present in possession of a clue to their 
explanation. 

PAPA, MAMMA. 

There is a limited class of words common to 
almost all languages, which owe their signification 
to a principle difierent from any of the foregoing. 
These are words formed by repetition of the 
simplest articulations, mama, baha, papa, nana, 
dada, tata, or with the vowel in the inverse order 
amma, abba, atta, &c. They doubtless arise in the 
first instance from the mother caressing the infant 
by an imitation of his own unmeaning mutterings : 
mummummum ! dada ! They thus appear rather 
as adoptions of the natural language of the infant 
than as inventions of the parent. It is, however, 
she who gives them their articulate shape, and 
appropriates their signification to the objects em- 
braced within the narrow range of the infant's 
thoughts,* the mother and father,, the mother's 
breast, the act of taking food, the infant himself. 
The sounds represented by the syllables ma ma 
being those earliest and most frequently uttered 
* See Appendix. 



96 PAPA, MAMMA. 

by the infant, tlie name of mama is commonly 
appropriated to the mother herself, leaving the 
choice of baba, papa, dada, &c., to signify the 
father, as chance may settle. Thus in Latin 
nurseries mamma was used for a mother, a nurse, 
a grandmother, and with the diminutive mamilla 
was retained in ordinary speech in the sense of 
the breast. With English children of the upper 
ranks mamma and papa are mother and father, 
while among the peasantry the corresponding 
terms are mammy and daddy, agreeing with Welsh 
mam and tad, which are the ordinary words of the 
latter language. In Esthonian we have emma^ 
mother, corresponding to Old Norse ammi, grand- 
mother, and German amme, the wet-nurse who 
supplies the place of a mother. But this selection 
of the syllables am and ma to designate the mother | 
is not without exception, and we find in Georgian 
mama, father, and haha, mother. 

Latin papas was father in nursery language 
pappus, grandfather. That fappa must once have 
been used in the place of the diminutive papilla to 
signify the breast or nipple appears from It. 
poppa, the breast, poppare, to give suck ; parallel 
with Lat. pappo, to eat, in children's language, 
properly to take the breast, to take food. Hence 



■X 



POPPINJAY, PUPPY. 97 

pappa, pap, food prepared for tlie soft gums of 
infancy. With Illyrian children also j^apati is to 
eat, as p)appen in Bavaria. Hence may be explained 
Vo\\^papinki, dainties, tidbits, or the terms pappe, 
pappekf used by Tyrolean children to signify any- 
thing nice to eat : zucherpappele, sugar plums. 
In our own lollipops the latter half of the word is 
from the same source, while the former half is to 
be explained from Bavarian lallen, liillen, to suck. 

On the other hand, the imitation of the mutter- 
ing sounds of a child by the syllables ha, pa, is 
often applied ^y^ "^^7 ^^ direct representation to 
signify prattling, talking senselessly, then talking 
in general. On this principle are formed Dutch 
habekn, Fr. haUller, and E. babble ; Fr. papoter ; 
Gr. papeln or pappeln and pappern, to babble, 
prattle ; whence Bavarian der Vapp'l, the parrot, 
a sense which explains the Italian name of the 
bird, papagallo, the talking cock, the origin of our 
obsolete popinjay. Magyar, papolni, to tattle. 

Returning to the significations arising from 
arbitrary appropriation, we pass from It. poppa, 
the breast, to Fr. poupon, a baby or infant at the 
breast ; poupee, a doll or imitation baby, a babe of 
clouts as it was formerly called, a milliner's block. 
Hence the figurative expression of a puppy, an 
7 



'98 ABBOT, NUX. 

empty-lieaded youth thinking of nothing but his 
fine habiliments. On the other hand, the same 
name is given to a young dog from the resemblance 
of his confiding innocence to that of a sucking 
child. 

From Hebrew ahha, father, the name of alhas 
was given to monks, whence abbaiia, sl society of 
monks, an abbey. The name of abbot was after- 
wards confined to the chief of the society, as abbess 
to the chief of a society of nuns. In the same way 
from. pajM, father, the name of papa is given in the 
Greek Church to priests in general, and has been 
retained by the Pope (in Italian Papa), the uni- 
versal head of the Catholic Church. The lUyrian 
nanUf mother, leads to It. nonno, grandfather, nonaa, 
grandmother, and thence a nun, a name given by 
way of respect to a religious recluse. '^\ 

The echo by the mother of the wrangling or 
contented tones of the infant, as she jogs it to sleep, 
produces the nurse's song orluUabj", la, la^ la, na,^l; 
na, na. From the repetition la, la, is formed the 
verb to lull, primarily to set a child to sleep, then 
to still the violence of any kind of action, as of the ^j 
wind or waves, or of bodily pain. The same imi- 
tation of the infant's utterance gives rise to Ger- 
man lallen, to speak imperfectly a? a child, from ^ 



LULL, NINNY. 99 

whence the signification is extended to the sense 
of talking in general, in Grr. XaXeiu, to speak. 

In Servian the nurse's song sounds l?/Uj hju, 
whence lyuJyati^ to rock, to swing ; lyulyaskay a 
cradle. In Italian nurseries the lullahy sounds ninna 
nanna, or na, na^ na. Hence nmnare, ninnellare, 
to rock, and in children's language nanna, bed, 
sleep : far la nanna, andare a nanna, to go to bed, 
to go to sleep. In the Mpongwe, a language of 
the West of Africa, we find nana, and in the 
Sowhylee of the Eastern coast, Ma, in the sense 
of sleep. K. different turn of thought leads to the 
Milanese nan, nanin, a caressing term for an in- 
fant ; caro el me nan, my darling baby ; ninna, 
ninceu, a little girl. In Latin nanus, a dwarf, the 
designation of a child is transferred to a person of 
childlike stature ; as in modern Greek vlvlov, a 
young child, a childish person, and English 7iinny, 
the designation is transferred to a person_ of 
childish understanding. 

The inarticulate utterance of the infant when 
he exhales his spirits in the exercise of his limbs 
seems to be represented by the syllables da or ta, 
which thence are applied to signify muscular 
action, as in Galla dadada goda, to knock, to beat. 
The French child, according to Menage, says 



100 DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUN. 

da-da-da wlien he wants sorQething or wants to 
name something, i. e. when he stretches out his 
hand for it, or points to it. In our own nurseries 
it is certain that the child is taught to say ta, 
when he stretches out his hand to receive some- 
thing, or to bid good-bye. Hence may be ex- 
plained the use of the root da or ta in the sense of 
give, or in that of the demonstrative pronoun, which 
is the spoken equivalent of the act of pointing. The 
use of da in the sense of give is not confined to the 
Aryan stock, but is found in the Yoruba of "West- 
ern Africa,, where it signifies strike, give, pay. 



101 



CHAPTER TV. 



ANALOGY. 



The greater part of our thouglits seem at the first 
glance so wholly unconnected with the idea of 
sound as to throw great difficulty in the way of a 
practical belief in the imitative origin of language. 
" That sounds can be rendered in language by 
sounds," says M'dller, " and that each language 
possesses a large stock of words imitating the 
sounds given out by certain things, who would 
deny ? And who would deny that some words 
originally expressive of sound only might be trans- 
ferred to other things which have some analogy 
with sound ? But how are things which do not 
appeal to the sense of hearing — how are the ideas 
of going, moving, standing, sinking, tasting, 
thinking, to be expressed?" — 2nd Series, p. 89. 
The answer to the query is already given in the 
former part of the passage : by analogy, or meta- 
phor, which is the transference of a word to some 



102 TASTE, THOUGHT. 

analogous signification, the conveyance of a mean- 
ing by mention of something which has an analogy 
with the thing to be signified. But in several of 
the instances specified by Miiller it is not difficult 
to show a direct connection with sound. Thus we 
have seen that the conceptions of taste are ex- 
pressed by reference to the smacking of the lips 
and tongue in the enjoyment of food. The idea 
of going is common to a hundred modes of pro- 
gression that occur in actual existence, of which 
any one may, and one in particular must, in every 
mode of expressing the idea, have been the t3'pe 
from which the name was originally taken. In 
the case of the word go itself, for which Johnson 
gives seventy meanings, the original is that which 
he places first : to walk, to move step by step, a 
sense which lends itself in the most obvious man- 
ner to imitative expression, by a representation of 
the sound of the footfall. The connection between 
thought and speech is so obvious that we need be 
at no loss for the means of expressing the idea of 
tbinking. Thus Greek (f)pa(o) is to say"; cppaCofiaif 
to say to oneself, to think, while Aoyo? signifies 
both speech, and thought. In some of the lan- 
guages of the Pacific thinking is said to be called 
speaking in the belly. Maori mea is to speak, say. 



SPARKLING. 103 

think, do ; hua, to name, think, know ; Txi, to 
speak, to think. 

The analogy between the senses of taste and • 
smell has been already mentioned, in consequence 
of which words originally applying to the sense of 
taste are transferred to the impressions of the ana- 
logous faculty. Thus from Latin sapor, taste, is 
descended the English savour, which is applied as 
well to the impressions of the nostrils as to those of 
the palate. The German schmecTien, to taste, is used 
in Bavaria in the sense of smell. In like manner / 
the analogy between sight and hearing enables us 
to signify conceptions of sight by metaphors from 
the domain of sound. Thus the idea of sparkling, 
or rapid flashing of a small concentrated light, is 
expressed by the figure of a crackling sound, con- 
sisting of a similar repetition of short sharp im- 
pressions on the ear. The word sparkle is a de- 
rivation from the same imitative root from which 
spring Swedish spraka, Danish sprage, Lithuanian 
sprageti, to crackle as firewood, to explode, rattle. 
The meaning of FTench p Stiller is first to crackle, 
then to sparkle. Dutch Hntelen is first to tinkle, 
then to twinkle, glitter. The Latin scintilla, a 
spark, has its origin in a form like Danish skingre, 
Norse singla, to ring, to klink. 



104 ANALOGY EETWEEX 

AgaiD, French ecJat (in Old Fr. esclat), properly 
a clap or explosion, is used in the sense of bright- 
ness, splendour, brilliancy. The word bright had 
a similar origin. It is the equivalent of G. 
prachty splendour, magnificence, which in Old 
Jligh German signified a clear ^und, outcr}^ 
tumult. Bavarian bracht, clang, noise. In AS. 
we have beorliiian, to resound, and beorhty bright. 

Leod was asungen 

Gleomannes gyd, 

Gamen eft astah, 
Beorhtede benc-sweg : 
The lay was sung, the gleeman's song, the sport grew high, 
the bench-notes resounded. — Beowulf, 2315. 

In the old poem of the Owl and the Nightingale 
bright is applied to the clear notes of a bird. 

Heo — song so schille and so hrihte 
That far and ner me hit iherde. — 1. 1654. 

Dutch schateren, sclieteren, to make a loud noise, 
to shriek with laughter ; schiterenj to shine, to 
glisten; Dan. hnistre, knittre, gnittre, to crackle; 
gnistre, to sparkle. Many striking examples of 
the same transference of signification may be 
quoted from the Finnish language, as Mli7ia, a 
ringing sound, a brilliant light ; kilia, tinkling, 
glittering ; uilista, to ring as a glass ; willatay 



SOUND AND SIGHT. 105 

idleUay icilahtaaj to flash, to glitter ; Itmista, to 
sound clear (parallel with E. chime), Idmmaltaay 
kiimottaa, to shine, to glitter, &e. In Galla, hilhilay 
a ringing noise as of a bell ; hilhilgoda (to make 
bilbil), to ring, to glitter, beam, glisten. — Tutschek 

The language of painters is full of musical 
metaphor. It speaks of harmonious or discordant 
colouring, discusses the tone of a picture. So in 
modern slang, which mainly consists in the use of 
new and violent metaphors (though perhaps, in 
truth, not more yiolent than those in which the 
terms of ordinary language had their origin), we 
hear of screaming colours, of dressing loud. 

But besides the analogy between external objects 
which enables us to give names taken from direct 
imitation to things unconnected with sound, it 
seems that no inconsiderable number of words are 
derived from a feeling of something analogous in 
the effort of utterance with the thing to be signi- 
fied, as for instance, in the case of the interjection 
hem ! from the feeling of the speaker that he is 
confining the signification within himself when he 
closes his mouth in the utterance of the final m. 
It was to analogies of this kind that the attention 
of the ancients was mainly directed, and it must 
be admitted that they open a wide door for that 



106 ANALOGIES 

loose speculation into which their linguistic philo- 
sophy is so apt to fall. Of this we have a fair 
example in the Cratylus, where Socrates is made 
to explain the inherent fitness of the letter sounds 
to signify phenomena of analogous nature in 
external existence. The letter r, he says, from the 
mobility of the tongue in pronouncing it, seemed 
to him who settled names an appropriate instru- 
ment for the imitation of movement. He accord- 
ingly used it for that purpose in peiv and por], flow 
and flux, then in Tpo\xos, rpaxvs, Kpoveiv, Opaveiv, 
€p€LK€iv, K€piJLaTL(€Lv, pviil3€LL>, trcmour, rough, 
strike, break, rend, shatter, whirl. Observing 
that the tongue chiefly slides in pronouncing /, he 
used' it in forming the imitative words Aeio?, 
smooth, XiTTapos, oily, Kok\o)brjs, gluey, oXiaOauetv, 
slide. And observing that 7i kept the voice 
within, he framed the'words €vhov, ^vtos, within, 
inside, fitting the letters to the sense. 

Much of the same kind is found in an interesting 
passage of Augustine, which is quoted by Lersch 
and Mljller. 

"The Stoics," he says, " hold that there is no 
word of which a clear account cannot be given. 
x4Lnd if you said that it would be equally neces- 
sary to trace the origin of the words in which the 



i 



or VOCAL SOUNDS. 107 

origin of the former one was explained and so on 
ad infinitum, they would admit that so it would be 
until you came to the point where there is direct 
resemblance between the sound of the word and 
the thing signified,, as when we speak of the 
tinkling (tinnitum) of brass, the neighing of 
horses, the bleating of sheep, the clang (clangorem) 
of trumpets, the clank (stridorera) of chains, for 
you perceive that these words sound like the 
things which are signified by them. But because 
there are things which do not sound, with these 
the similitude of touch comes into play, so that if 
the things are soft or rough to the touch, they are 
fitted with names that by the nature of the letters 
are felt as soft or rough to the ear. Thus the 
word lenej soft, itself sounds soft to the ear ; and 
who does not feel also that the word asperitas, 
roughness, is rough like the thing which it 
signifies ? Voluptas, pleasure, is soft to the ear ; 
crux, the cross, rough. The things themselves 
affect our feelings in accordance with the sound of 
the words. As honey is sweet to the taste, so the 
name, 7nel, is felt as soft by the ear. Acre, sharp, 
is rough in both ways. Lana, wool, and vepres, 
briars, affect the ear in accordance with the way 
in which the things signified are felt by touch. 



108 ANALOGIES BETAVEEN 

" It was believed that the first germs of language 
were to be found in the words where there was 
actual resemblance between the sound of the word 
and the thing which it signified : that from thence 
the invention of names proceeded to take hold of 
the resemblance of things between themselves ; as 
when, for example, the cross is called crux because 
the rough sound of the word agrees with the 
roughness of the pain which is sufiered on the 
cross ; while the legs are called crura, not on 
account of the roughness of pain, but because 
in length and hardness they are like wood in com- 
parison with the other members of the body."* 

"We can only smile at this philosophic trifling, 
but that there is a true analogy between sound 
and shape or movement is shown by the fact that 
we apply the same qualifications to both classes of 
phenomena. "We speak of a rough or a smooth 
£ound and a rough or smooth motion or outline. 
The ground of this relation between the two con- 
ceptions is, that both sound and motion are the 
effect of mechanical action, and are constantly 
associated in our experience, so that hardly a sound 
can be heard which does not suggest the thought 
of some kind of movement, from the crack of a gun 
* The oriorinal is "fiven at the end of the volume. 



SOUND AND MOVEMENT. 109 

to the rustle of a leaf. At the same time we have 
an internal knowledge of the phenomena from the 
power we possess of producing sound by the exer- 
tion of the voice, and motion by the voluntary 
action of the hand or foot. We recognize in both 
cases the dependance of the phenomenon on the 
effort exerted, and we attribute to the sound or the 
movement the quality of the effort by which it was 
produced. Thus we speak of an abrupt, a tremul- 
ous, or a broken sound as well as motion, and we 
thence employ a vocal utterance of an abrupt, a 
tremulous, or a broken nature to signify a move- 
ment of analogous character, although the move- 
ment itself may be wholly unaccompanied by noise 
of any kind. Thus there is a direct imitation of 
action by the voice, and not merely an imitation 
of sound, although doubtless whenever action was 
thus represented, the meaning of the utterance 
would at first be explained by accompanying ges- 
tures, as the symbols of Chinese and hieroglyphic 
writing frequently are by the keys or distinctive 
characters indicating the general nature of the 
thing signified. Now among the consonantal 
sounds those of the mutes, or checks as they are 
called by Miiller, consisting of the letters b, d, g,"p, 
t, k, are distinguished from all other consonants by 



110 ANALOGIES BETWEEN 

this, " that for a time they stop the emission of 
breath altogether." — Miiller, 2nd Series, p. 138. 
Hence in pronouncing a syllable ending in a mute 
or check we are conscious of an abrupt termina- 
tion of the vocal effort, and we employ a wide range 
of syllables constructed on that principle to signify 
a movement abruptly checked, as shag, shog, jag, 
jog, jig, dag, dig, stag (in stagger, to reel abruptly 
from side to side), job, jib, stab, rug, tug ; Fr. 
sag-oter, to jog ; sac- cade, a rough and sudden jerk, 
motion, or check. — Sadler, Fr. Diet. 

The syllable suk is used in Bremen to represent 
a jog in riding or going ; Dat geit jummer suk ! 
suk ! of a rough horse. Ene olde suksuk, an old 
worthless horse or carriage, a rattle trap. Sukkeln, 
German schuckehi, schockeln, to jog. On the same 
principle the component syllables in zigzag fun- 
damentally represent short impulses abruptly 
changing in direction, and thence the shape of the 
line traced out by such a movement, the changes 
in direction being indicated by the change of vowel 
from i to a. G. zacke, a jag or sharp projection ; 
zickzack, zigzag, a line or movement composed of 
a series of jogs. The sjdlables tick, tack, tock, 
represent sharp smart sounds of various kinds, and 
the associated or analogous movements. Thus the 



I 



SOUND AND MOVEMENT. Ill 

component syllables of Bolognese tec-tac, cec-ciac^ 
a cracker, represent the successive explosions of the 
firework, in which it jumps sharply about in 
difierent directions. We have then English tick- 
tack for the beat of a clock, Italian tecche-tocchCy 
Brescian tech-tech, toch-toch, for the sound of 
knocking at a door, Parmesan tic-toe for the beat 
of the heart or the pulse, or the ticking of a watch. 
Hence tick or tock for any light sharp movement. 
To tick a thing off, to mark it with a .touch of the 
pen ; to take a thing on tick, to have it ticked or 
marked on the score ; to tickle, to incite by light 
touches. Bolognese tocc, Brescian toch, the blow 
of the clapper on a bell or knocker on a door, lead 
to Spanish tocar, to knock, to ring a bell, to beat 
or play on a musical instrument, and also (with 
the meaning softened down) as Italian toccare, 
French toucher, to touch. The Milanese toch, like 
English tick, is a stroke with a pen or pencil, then, 
{figuratively, a certain space, so much as is tra- 
versed at a stroke ; on bell tocch di strada, a good 
piece of road ; then, as Italian tocco, a piece or bit 
of anything. 

The sound of a crack suggests the idea of a sud- 
den start or abrupt movement, and when repeated 
it indicates broken movement, movement sharply 



112 CROOK, CROSS. 

changing in direction, and thence a jagged or 
crooked outline, as in the Norse expression, i krok 
aa i krik, in a crooked path, with many bendings 
first on one side, then on the other. The sjdlable 
crack thus becomes adapted to signify a sudden 
change of direction or sharp bend, or anything 
bent, as in 01^. krakr, krokr, a hoo^, loop, angle, 
bending, turn ; E. crook, crooked, Latin crux, cross, 
an implement in which (as also in a crutch) the 
arm is brought at right angles across the stem. 
From the same source are Greek KpiKos, and with 
inversion of the vowel KipKos, Lat. circus, cir cuius, a 
ring, circle. The addition of a nasal to the imita- 
tive syllable gives crincum-crankmn, with twists 
and turnings ; cringle-cr angle, a zigzag (Halllwell) ; 
crinkle, to go in and out, rumple, wrinkle ; crank- 
ling, twisting and turning ; crank, a twist, a handle 
bent at right angles ; ON. hringla, kringr, hringr, 
Danish ring, a circle. 

In other cases the representation of a crackling 
sound is applied to signify the multifarious move- 
ment of a complex body. ' So French 'petiller, to 
crackle, expresses the twitching of the limbs of a 
person who cannot keep still for impatience. The 
Swedish prassla, to rustle or crackle, in a secondary 
application signifies to flutter with the wings, 



SPRAWL, SPARKLE. 113 

sprawl like an infant, flounder like a fish out of 
water, wag the tail, tremble like tlie leaves of a 
tree. The sister form sprassla^ to crackle, preserves 
the same original sense, while the secondary appli- 
cation is marked by a slight modification of sound 
in sprattla, to sprawl, or throw about the legs, cor- 
responding to provincial English sprottle, to strug- 
gle, to throw about the arms and legs, and spruttle^ 
to sprinkle or scatter drops of liquid in all direc- 
tions.* Another instance, where the original and 
secondary applications are distinguished by a slight 
modification in the form of the word, is found in 
Swedish spralca, to crackle, and sparka (with in- 
version of the liquid and vowel), to kick, to sprawL 
In the North of England to spark is to splash, to 
scatter abroad particles of wet. *' I sparkyll abrode, 
I sprede thynges asonder." — Palsgrave 

The same transference from ideas of sound to 
those of extension takes place with the syllables 
muk, mikf mot, tot, kuk, kik, &c., which were 
formerly mentioned as being used (generally wdth 
a negative) to express the least appreciable sound. 
The closeness of the connection between such a 
meaning and the least appreciable movement is 

* Compare Zulu sabulala, to struggle violently, to 'dis- 
perse, lie scattered about. 

8 



114 TRANSFERENCE FROM SOUND 

witnessed by the use of the same word still to 
express alike the absence of sound or motion. 
Accordingly the Gr. muck, representing in the first 
instance a sound barely audible, is made to signify 
a slight movement. Mucken, to mutter, to say a 
word ; also to stir, to make the least movement. 

The representative syllable takes the form of 
mick or kick in the Dutch phrase noch micken 
noch kicken, not to utter a syllable. Then, passing 
to the signification of motion, it produces Dutch 
micken, Illyrian migati, to wink ; micati {mitsati) , 
to stir ; Lat. micare, to glitter, to move rapidly to 
and fro. The analogy is then carried a step 
further, and the sense of a slight movement is 
made a stepping-stone to the signification of a 
material atom, a small bodily object. Hence Lat. 
and It. mica, Spanish miga, Fr. mie, a crura, a 
little bit, G. m'ucke, a midge, the smallest kind of 
fly. The train of thought runs through the same 
course in Dutch kicken, to utter a slight sound ; It. 
cicalare, chichirillare, to chatter ; Fr. chicoter, to 
sprawl like an infant ; Welsh cicio, and E. kick, to 
strike with the foot. Then in the sense of any 
least portion of bodily substance, It. cica, Fr. chic, 
chiquet, a little bit ; chique, a quid of tobacco, a 
playing-marbie, properly a smalllun-pofclay ; Sp. 



TO MOVEMENT AND BODY. 115 

chicOy little. In the same way from the representa- 
tion of a slight sound by the syllable moty mut, as 
in E. mutter, or in the Italian phrase nonfare ne 
motto ne totto, not to utter a syllable, we have E. 
mote, an atom, and mite, the least visible insect ; 
Du. mot, dust, fragments ; It. motta, Fr. motte, 
a lump of earth. From Du. mot again must be ex- 
plained motte, a moth, the worm that corrupts our 
stores of clothes and reduces them to motes or frag- 
ments ; or the fly that springs from it. 

The use of a syllable like tot to represent a short 
indefinite sound is shown in the Italian phrase 
above quoted ; in Old E. totle, to whisper (Promp- 
torium), Du. tateren, to stammer, to sound like a 
trumpet ; Old Norse tauta, to mutter ; Norse tot, 
muttering, murmur; E. tootle, to make noises on 
a flute or horn ; titter, to laugh in a subdued 
manner. The expression passes on to the idea of 
movement in E. totter, tottle, to move slightly to 
and fro, to toddle like a child ; tot, to jot down or 
note with a slight movement of the pen ; titter, to 
tremble, to seesaw (Halliwell) ; Lat. titillo. Pro- 
vincial E. to tittle, to tickle or excite by slight 
touches or movements. Then, passing from the 
sense of a slight movement to that of a small 
bodily matter, we have E. tot, anything very 



116 EXPRESSION 

smaU ; tottyy little (Halliwell) ; Danish, toty Scotch 
taitf a bunch or flock of flax, wool, or the like ; It. 
tozzOy a bit, a morsel ; E. tity a bit, a morsel, any- 
thing smaU of its kind, a small horse, a little girl ; 
titty y tiny, small ; titfaggots, small short faggots ; 
titlark y a small kind of lark ; titmouse (Dutch 
mossche, a sparrow), a small bir^i ; tittk, a jot or 
little bit. It. citto, zitto, a lad ; citta, zitelhy a girl. 
The passage from the sense of a light movement 
to that of a small portion is seen also in j^a/, 
a light quick blow and a small lump of matter; 
to doty to touch lightly with a pen, to^make a slight 
mark, and doty a small lump or pat. — Halliwell. 
To jot y to touch, to jog, to note a thing hastily on 
paper ; joty a small quantity. 

The change of vowel from a^ or o to e, which was 
seen above in tot and tity is another example of 
correspondence between modifications in the efibrt 
of utterance and the character of the thing sig- 
nified. The vowels a and o are pronounced with 
open throat and the fuU sound of the voice, while 
the orifice of the windpipe is narrowed and the 
volume of sound diminished in the pronunciation 
of i. Hence we unconsciously pass to the use of 
the vowel i in expressing diminution of action or 
of size. 



OF DIMINUTION. 117 

The sound of tlie footfall is represented in Ger- 
man by the syllables trapp-tmpp-trapp ; from 
whence Du. trap, a step, trappen, to tread^ Swedish. 
trappa, stairs. The change to the short com- 
pressed i in trip adapts the syllable to signify a 
light quick step : Du. trippen, trippelen, trepelen, to 
leap, to dance (Kiliaan) ; Fr. trepigner^ to beat the 
ground with, the feet. Clank represents the sound 
of something large, as chains ; clink, or chink, of 
smaller things, as money. To sup up, is to take up 
liquids by large spoonfuls ; to sip, to sup up by 
little and little, with lips barely open. Top, nab, 
knob, signify an extremity of a broad round shape ; 
tip, nib, nijjple, a similar object of a smaller size 
and pointed shape. 

A young relation of my own adopted the use of 
baby* as a diminutival prefix. Baby-Thomas was 
the smaller of two men-servants of that name. But 
when he wishes to carry the diminution further he 
narrows the sound to bee-bee, and at last it becomes 
a beebee-beebee thing. Thus he has practically 
invented the word beebee in the sense of little. It 
is possible that such a pronunciation of baby may 
have been the origin of wee or wee-icee, small, but 

* So in the Vei language of Western Africa, den, child, 
and also, little, small. 



118 ANALOGIES BETWEEN 

it is more likely that it is a mere representation of 
the utterance when we make the voice small for the 
purpose of expressing smallness of size. It will be 
observed that we increase the force of the expres- 
sion by dwelling on the narrow vowel and contract- 
ing the voice to a thread. A little tee-eeny thing; 
a teeny-weeny thing. 

The consciousness of forcing the voice through a 
narrow opening in the pronunciation of the sound 
ee leads to the use of syllables like peep, JieeTc, teet, 
to signify a thing making its way through a nar- 
row opening, just beginning to appear, looking 
through between obstacles. Danish at pippefrem 
is to spring forth, to make its way through the 
bui'sting envelope, whence French pej^in, the 2^^j> 
or pippin, the germ from whence the plant is to 
spring. The Swedish has titta fre?n, to peep 
through, to begin to appear ; titfay to peep, in old 
English to teet. 

The rois knoppis tetand furth thare hed 
Gan chyp and kythe thare vemale lippis red. 

Douglas Virgil, 401. 8. 

The peep of dawn is when the curtain of darkness 
begins to lift and the first streaks of light to push 
through the opening. 

The syllables huy pa are among those that come 






SOUND AjS'd movement. 119 

tlie readiest to the lips, and thence they are used in 
the construction of words representing a light mur- 
muring sound, as that of broken water or of voices 
indistinctly heard. Hence Du. babelen, Gr. papehi, 
Fr. papoter, to babble, chatter, tattle ; Du. popelen, 
to mutter, murmur ; Fr. p>apelard, a mutterer of 
prayers, a hypocrite ; E. popple^ to sound like 
broken water, to bubble up, and then (with the 
signification transferred from sound to motion) to 
tumble about like the surface of boiling water. 
The same transition from sound to movement 
explains the name of the poplar (properly poppler) \ 
from the tremulous movement of the leaves cha- 
racteristic of that kind of tree : Lat. populuSj 
Du. popelen-hoonij popeUer, Prov. E. popple, Gr. 
pappel. On the same principle the Lat. papilio, 
a butterfly, expresses the fluttering flight of the 
creature, which never seems to have a settled aim, 
but keeps constantly changing in direction from 
one moment to another. The AValachian has flu- 
turd, to flutter ; fluturu, a butterfly. Zulu p)ciptt, 
papama, to flutter ; pape, a wing, feather. 

As syllables ending in a mute or check are adapted 
to represent a sound or a movement brought abruptly 
to a conclusion, so a ringing or prolonged sound is 
commonly represented by a syllable ending with 



120 EXPRESSTOKI OF MOVEMENT. 

one of the liquids I, m, n, ng, r, wliicli are sounded 
by a continuous emission of the breath. 

Thus squeak expresses a short acute cry ; squeal 
a prolonged sound of similar character. Clap, 
clack, rap, rat-tat-tat, represent abrupt sounds like 
those arising from the collision of hard bodies; 
linell, loom, din, ring, clang, sounds With more or 
less of resonance. And from sounds of such a 
nature the signification is frequently transferred to 
a swinging movement, in which the impulse gradu- 
ally dies away instead of stopping abruptly. Thus 
from E. loom, hum. It. rimhomlare, to resound, 
I>u. hommen, to resound, to beat a drum, homham- 
men, to ring bells, we pass to G. hammelen, to 
dangle, to swing. The same relation is seen 
between E. ding-dong for the sound of bells and 
the yerb to dangle; or between It. din-din, 
don-don, for the sound of hells, and dondolare, to 
swing, toss, shake to and fro, and thence dally, 
spend the time idly ; Fr. dajidiner, to sway to and 
fro ; E. dandle, to toss a child up and down. The 
train of thought is continued in It. dondola, a 
child^s toy or playing baby ; Scotch dandilly^ made 
for play rather than use, showy ; E. dandy, pro- 
perly a toy or puppet, then a puppy, an over- 
dressed coxcomb. 



FREQUENTATIVES. 121 

On the same principle we pass from Lat. tin- 
iinire, to ring or tingle, to Italian tentennare, to 
shake, jog, stir ; tentennare alV iiscio, to knock at 
the door. And as from tintinire is formed Fr. 
tinter, to tingle, so it seems that a similar modifi- 
cation must have given rise to Latin tentare, to try 
or tempt, properly to shake at a thing in order to 
learn whether it is firm. Italian tentennio, jog- 
ging, agitation ; tentennio^ the tempter, the Devil. 

FREQTJENTATIVES. 

It must not be supposed that every separate syl- 
lable of our inflected words is the rernains of what 
was once a self-significant element. The el or er 
or it of frequentative verbs like rattle, clatter^ 
palp-it-o, have probably never had an independent 
existence. The simplest mode of expressing con- 
tinuance of action would be by actual repetition of 
the sjdlable representing a single pulsation or 
momentary element of the action in question, as in 
murmur ; turtur, a dove whose cry is tur tur ; 
tintinio, I sound tin^ tin, &c. Words of this form- 
ation are exceedingly common in barbarous lan- 
guages,* and in the Pacific dialects they form a 

* Reduplication is a regular mood of the verb in some 
African languages expressing indefinite continuance. Thus 



122 EXPRESSION 

large proportion of the dictionary. But the prin- 
ciple is one that can be called into use in the coin- 
ing of fresh words even in our own language, as in 
the case of the verb pooh-pooh, to use the interjec- 
tion pooh I to a thing, to treat it with contempt. 
Then on the same principle, on which the word 
representing the cry of an animal is used to desig- 
nate the author of the cry, the mode of expressing 
continuance of action by repetition of the signifi- 
cant element is carried on to the agent or to the 
instrument of action. Thus in Maori we find 
mawhiti, to skip ; mawhitiwhiti, a grasshopper ; 
puka, to pant ; puka-puka, the lungs, the agent in 
panting ; muka, flax, mukamuka, to wipe or rub, 
for which purpose a bunch of flax would be em- 
ployed ; muraj to flame, muramura^ flame. Malay 
ayun, to rock ; ayunayunan, a cradle. 

In more cultivated languages this constant repe- 
tition is found monotonous, and the significant syl- 
lable is slurred over more or less in repetition, as in 
susurrus iov sur-sur-us, a whisper ; rat-at-at-at for' 
the knocking at a door. Or the element expressing 
continuance may be a mere echo of the fundamental 

in Wolof sopa is to love ; sopsopa, to love constantly. In 
Mpongwe, kamba, speak ; kambagamba, talk, at random ; 
ke/idi, walk ; kendigenda, walk about for amusement. 



OF CONTINUANCE. 123 

syllable, as in rach-et, a clattering noise ; French 
cliqu-et-is, clash, a continued sound of click, click. 
The syllable et or it could only properly be used in 
this manner as the echo of a hard sound, but many 
devices of expression are extended by analogy far 
bej^ond their original aim, and thus the addition 
of the syllable it has become the common expres- 
sion of repetition or continuance in Latin, as from 
clamo, to call, clamito, to keep calling, to call fre- 
quently. The elements usually 'employed by us 
for the same purpose are composed of an obscure 
vowel with the- consonants I or r, on which the 
voice can dwell for a length of time with a more 
or less sensible vibration, representing the effect 
on the ear when a rapid succession of beats has 
merged in a continuous whirr. Thus in the pat- 
tering of rain or hail, expressing the fall of a rapid 
succession of drops on a sonorous surface, the sylla- 
ble pat imitates the sound of a single drop, while 
the vibration of the r in the second syllable repre- 
sents the murmuring sound of the shower when 
the attention is not directed to the individual taps 
of which it is composed. In Kke manner to 
clatter is to do anything accompanied by a 
succession of noises that might be represented 
by the syllable clat ; to crackle j to make a sue- 



124 



EXPRESSION 



cession of cracks ; to rattle, dabble, bubble, gug- 
gle, to make a succession of noises that miglit 
be represented individually by the sjdlables rat, 
dab, bitb, gug. The expression is then extended to 
signify continued action unconnected with any 
particular noise, as grapple, to make a succession 
of grabs ; shuffle, to make a succession of shoves ; 
draggle, to aggie, joggle, to continue dragging, wag- ^ 
ging, jogging. The final el or er is frequently re- 1 
placed by a simple /, which, as Ihre remarks under 
gncella, has something ringing (aliquid tinnuli)_in 
it. Thus to meicl and pule, in French miauler 
Q,ndL plauler, are to cry 7neio and pew; to wail is to 
cry wae, to koicl or growl, to cry hoo or groo. 

The use of the termination signifying continu- ii 
ance or repetition is further extended when it is i\ 
added to an element that does not of itself involve 
the idea of action, as in kneel from knee, prowl jj 
from French proie, prey. Here the final I vaguely 
indicates action having reference to the prior ele- 
ment of the word. To kneel is to use the knee, to 
rest upon the knee ; to prowl, to act in reference 
to prey, to seek for prey. 

In this use of the frequentative element it adds 
nothing to the sense that is not already implied by 
the verbal form of the word, and therefore it is 



OF CONTINUANCE. 125 

frequently omitted in one dialect while it is found 
in the corresponding word of another dialect. 
Thus in English we speak of the meio-ing of a cat 
where the French use miau-l-er. The Germans 
have knie-en corresponding to our knee-l. 

But the element is employed in the construction 
of adjectives and nouns as well as verbs. Thus 
Anglo-Saxon Jicoly icancol, loancly fickle, incon- 
stant, habitually wavering, are formed by the 
addition of the frequentative element to the roots 
shown in German fickfacken, to move to and fro, 
to fidge, and wankeHy wankelen, to wag, to waver. 

^Yhen used as a substantive the frequentative 
form has the sense of the agent or instrument of 
action, as in Anglo-Saxon rynel, a runner ; or in 
rubber, what rubs or what is used in rubbing, and 
it thus performs the same office which was filled by 
the repetition of the significant syllable in Maori. 



126 



CHAPTER V. 



CONCLUSION. 



"When we come to sum up the evidence of the 
imitative origin of language, we find that words 
are to be found in every dialect that are used with 
a conscious intention of directly imitating sound, 
such as flap, crack, smack, or the interjections ah! 
ugh ! But sometimes the signification is carried 
on, either by a figurative mode of expression, or 
by association, to something quite distinct from 
the sound originally represented, although the 
connection between the two may be so close as to 
be rarely absent from the mind in the use of the 
word. Thus the word flap originally imitates the 
sound made by the blow of a flat surface, as the 
wing of a bird or the corner of a sail. It then 
passes on to signify the movement to and fro of a 
flat surface, and is thence applied to the moveable 
leaf of a table, the part that moves on a hinge up 
and down, where all direct connectioi with sound 



IMITATIVE CHAUACriER OBSCURED. 127 

is lost. In. like manner crack imitates the sound 
made by a hard body breaking, and is applied in 
a secondary way to the effects of the breach, to 
the separation between the broken parts, or to a 
narrow separation between adjoining edges, such 
as might have arisen from a breach between them. 
But when we speak of looking through the crack 
of a door we have no thought of the sound made 
l?y a body breaking, although it is not difficult, on 
a moment's reflection, to trace the connection be- 
tween such a sound and the narrow opening which 
is our real meaning. It is probable that smack is 
often used in the sense of taste without a thought 
of the smacking sound of the tongue in the enjoy- 
ment of food, which is the origin of the word. 

When an imitative word is used in a secondary 
sense, it is obviously a mere chance how long, or 
how generally, the connection with the sound it 
was originally intended to represent, will continue 
to be felt in daily speech. Sometimes the con- 
necting links are to be found only in a foreign 
language, or in forms that have become obsolete 
in our own, when the unlettered man can only 
regard the word he is using as an arbitrary 
symbol. It is admitted on all hands that the 
childish name oi papa for father arises from imita- 



128 PRESUMPTION IN FAVOUR 

tion of tlie imperfect babbling of infancy, but no 
one acquainted only with English would recognize 
the same word in the name of the Pope, the father 
of the Catholic Church. We should hardly have 
connected ugly with the interjection ugh! if we 
had not been aware of the obsolete verb ug, to cry 
ugh ! or feel horror at, and it is only the accidental 
preservation of one or two passages where the 
verb is written houge, that gives us the clue by 
which huge and hug are traced to the same source. 
Thus the imitative power of words is gradually 
obscured by figurative use and the loss of inter- 
mediate forms, until all suspicion of the original 
principle of their signification has faded away in 
the minds of all but the few who have made the 
subject their special study. There is, moreover, 
no sort of difference either in outward appearance, 
or in mode of use, or in aptness to combine with 
other elements, between words which we are any 
how able to trace to an imitative source, and others 
of whose significance the grounds are wholly 
unknown. It would be impossible for a person 
who knew nothing of the origin of the words 
huge and vast, to guess from the nature of the 
words which of the two was derived from the 
imitation of sound ; and when he was informed that 



OF A VERA CAUSA. 129 

huge had been explained on this principle, it 
would be difficult to avoid the inference that a 
similar origin might possibly be found for vast 
also. Nor can we doubt that a wider acquaint- 
ance with the forms through which our language 
has past would make manifest the imitative origin 
of numerous words whose signification now ap- 
pears to be wholly arbitrary. And why should it 
be assumed that any words whatever are beyond 
the reach of such an explanation ? 

If onomatopoeia is a vera causa as far as it goes ; 
if it afibrds an adequate account of the origin of 
words signifying things not themselves apprehen- 
sible by the ear, it behoves the objectors to the 
theory to explain what are the limits of its reach, 
to specify the kind of thought for which it is 
inadequate to find expression, and the grounds of 
its shortcomings. And as the difficulty certainly 
does not lie in the capacity of the voice to repre- 
sent any kind of sound, it can ovlj be found in the 
limited powers of metaphor, that is, in the capacity 
of one thing to put us in mind of another. It will 
be necessary then to show that there are thoughts 
so essentially differing in kind from any of those 
that have been shown to be capable of expression on 
the principle of imitation, as to escape the infer- 



130 NUMBER OF IMITATIVE WORDS 

ence in favour of the general possibility of that 
mode of expression. Hitherto, however, no one 
has ventured to bring the contest to such an 
issue. The arguments of objectors have been 
taken almost exclusively from cases where tlie 
explanations offered by the supporters of the theory 
are either ridiculous on the face of them, or are 
founded in manifest blunder, or are too far-fetched 
to afford satisfaction ; while the positive evidence 
of the validity of the principle, arising from cases 
where it is impossible to resist the evidence of an 
imitative origin, is slurred over^ as if the number 
of such cases was too inconsiderable to merit atten- 
tion in a comprehensive survey of language. 

That the words of imitative origin are neither 
inconsiderable in number, nor restricted in signi- 
fication to any limited class of ideas, is sufficiently 
shown by the examples given in the foregoing 
pages. We cannot open a dictionary without 
meeting with them, and in any piece of descrip- 
tive writing they are found in abundance. Take 
an instance from the first novel that comes to 
hand : 

*' Then came a light pattering of feet, the flutter 
of a muslin dress, the resonant bang of a heavy 
door ; and the -prettiest woman I had ever seen in 



NOT INCONSIDERABLE. 131 

my life came tripping along the diurchyard path^ 
— Sir Jasper's Tenant, ii. 131. 

Here, without special intention on the part of 
the writer, we have seven examples in five lines. 

N'o doubt the number of words which remain 
unexplained on this principle would constitute 
much the larger portion of the dictionary, but this 
is no more than should be expected by any reason- 
able believer in the theory. As long as the imita- 
tive power of a word is felt in speech it will be 
kept pretty close to the original form. But when 
the signification is diverted from the object of 
imitation, and the word is used in a secondary 
sense, it immediately becomes liable to corruption 
from various causes, and the imitative character is 
rapidly obscured. The imitative force of the 
interjections ah ! or ach ! and ugh ! mainly de- 
pends upon the aspiration, but when the vocable 
is no longer used directly to represent the cry of 
pain or of shuddering, the sound of the aspirate is 
changed to that of a hard guttural, as in ache (ake) 
and ugly, and the consciousness of imitation is 
wholly lost. 

In savage life, when the communities are 
small and ideas few, language is liable to rapid 
change. To this efiect we may cite the testimony 



132 ORIGIN OF WORDS 

of a thoughtful traveller who had unusual oppor- 
tunities of observation. *' There are certain pecu- 
liarities in Indian habits which lead to a quick 
corruption of language and segregation of dialects. 
When Indians are conversing among themselves 
they seem to have pleasure in itjventing new 
modes of pronunciation and in distorting words. 
It is amusing to notice how the whole party will 
laugh when the wit of the circle perpetrates a new 
slang term, and these words are very often re- 
tained. I have noticed this during long voyages 
made with Indian crews. When such alterations 
occur amongst a family or horde which often live 
many years without communication with the rest 
of their tribe, the local corruption of language 
becomes perpetuated. Single hordes belonging to 
the same tribe and inhabiting the banks of the 
same river thus become, in the course of many 
years' isolation, unintelligible to other hordes, as 
happens with the Collin as on the Jurua. I think 
it very probable, therefore, that the disposition to 
invent new words and new modes of pronunciation 
added to the small population and habits of isola- 
tion of hordes and tribes, are the causes of the won- 
derful diversity of languages in South America.'^ — 
.Eates, Naturalist on the Amazons, i. 330. 

But even in civilized life, where the habitual use 



EASILY OBSCURED. 133 

of writing has so strong a tendency to fix tlie forms 
of language, words are continually changing in 
pronunciation and in application from one gener- 
ation to another ; and in no very long period com- 
pared with the duration of man, the speech of the 
ancestors becomes unintelligible to their descend- 
ants. In such cases it is only the art of writing 
that preserves the pedigree of the altered forms. 
If English, French, and Spanish were barbarous 
unwritten languages no one would dream of any 
relation between bishop, eveque, and vescow, all 
immediate descendants of the Latin e2:)i8copus. 
Wlio, without knowledge of the intermediate 
diurniis and giorno, would suspect that such a word 
as jour could be derived from dies f or without 
written evidence would have thought of resolving 
Goodbye into God he with you (God b' w' ye), or 
topsyturvy into topside the other icay (top si"* t' o^er 
way) ? or who would have detected the name of St 
Olave in Tooley Street ? Suppose that in any of 
these cases the word had been mimetic in its earlier 
form, how vain it would have been to look for any 
traces of imitation in the later ! If we allow the 
influences which have produced such changes as 
the above to operate through that vast lapse of 
time required to mould out of a common stock such 
languages as English, Welsh, and Russian, we 



134 COMPARISON OF WORDS 

shall wonder rather at the large than the small- 
number of cases^ in which traces of the original 
imitation are still to be made out. 
. The letters of the alphabet have a strong analogy 
with the case of language. The letters are signs 
which represent articulate sounds ^through the 
sense of sight, as words are signs which represent 
every subject of thought through the sense of 
hearing. Now the significance of the names by 
which the letters are known in Hebrew and Greek 
affords a strong presumption that they were 
originally pictorial imitations of material things, 
and the presumption is converted into moral cer- 
tainty by the accidental preservation in one or two 
cases of the original portraiture. The zigzag line 
which represents the wavy surface of water when 
used as the symbol of Aquarius among the signs 
of the zodiac is found in Egyptian hieroglyphics 
with the force of the letter ?2.* If we cut the sym- 

* The evidence for the derivation of the letter N from 
the symbol representing water (in Egyptian, noun) cannot 
be duly appreciated unless taken in conjunction with the 
case of the letter M. The combination of the symbols 1 
and 2, as shown at the head of the figure, occurs very fre- 
quently in hieroglyphics with the force of M N. The lower 
symbol is used for n, and thus in this combination the 



WITH LETTERS. 135 

bol down to the three last strokes of the zigzag we 
shall have the 7i of the early Greek inscriptions, 
which does not materially differ from the capital 
JN" of the present day. 

But no one from the mere form of the letter 
could have suspected an intention of representing 
water. Nor is there one of the letters, the actual 
form of which would afford us the least assistance 

upper symbol undoubtedly has the force of 77i, although it 
is said to be never used independently for that letter. 

2AAAA/\ j V\^ 

9 N i0V\ 111/] 1^12 

Now if the two symbols he epitomized by cutting them 
down to their extremity, as a lion is represented (fig. 13) by 
his head and fore-legs, it will leave figures 3 and 4, which 
are identical with the M and N of the early Phoenician and 
Greek. Figures 5, 6, 7, are forms of Phoenician M from 
Gesenius ; 8, ancient Greek M ; 9, Greek N from Gesenius ; 
10 and 11 from inscriptions in the British Museum; 12, 
Phoenician N. 



136 INFERENCE IN FAVOUR 

in guessing at the object it was meant to represent. 
Why then should it be made a difficulty in admit- 
ting the imitative origin of the oral signs, that the 
aim at imitation can be detected in only a third or 
a fifth, or whatever the proportion may be, of the 
radical elements of our speech ? If iqaitation is the 
only intelligible origin of language, the instances 
in which it throws no light on the signification 
of the word are only examples of our ignorance. 
However numerous the words may be of whose 
origin we know nothing, they can no more be cited 
to limit the reach of a principle which is known to 
be efficient in other cases, than the assertion of a 
hundred witnesses that they had not seen a murder 
committed, can avail against the evidence of one 
who did. 

I find then that a considerable proportion of the 
roots of language can be explained on the only in- 
telligible principle ofsignification, viz. the indication 
of something that shall serve to put the hearer in 
mind of the thing to be signified ; as when the deaf 
and dumb man points to his lip to signify red, or 
the nurse makes a sound like the lowing of the 
animal to signify a cow. But the imitative prin- 
ciple imprints no ear-mark upon its progeny, in- 
delibly marking the stock throughout the entire 



OF ONOMATOPCEIA. 137 

period of growth. On the contrary, it is seen that 
the evidence of an imitative origin is easily 
obliterated by the development and vrear and tear 
of language, and progress of metaphor, and can 
often be recovered only by a careful comparison 
with obsolete forms and foreign correlatives. And 
since I find that we are able, with our imper- 
fect knowledge of the links of language, to demon- 
strate an imitative origin in numerous cases where 
there is no consciousness of imitation in the daily 
use of the words^ I conclude that a much larger 
proportion (and why not the entire stock?) might 
be accounted for on the same principle if the whole 
pedigree of language was open befoi'e us. But if 
our progenitors might so have stumbled into lan- 
guage by the natural exercise of their faculties, it 
is surely irrational to suppose that they were lifted 
over the first difficulties of the path by any super- 
natural go-cart, whether in the shape of direct in- 
spiration, or of some temporary instinct specially 
lent for the purpose and since allowed to die out. 

It cannot be denied that the difficulty of imagin- 
ing a speechless condition of mankind does oppose 
a serious obstacle to any rational solution of the 
problem. And this difficulty may arise either 
from an excusable repugnance to think of Man in 



138 A SPEECHLESS CONDITION 

SO brutish a condition, as that to which he would 
be reduced by the want of speech, or from mere 
inability to realize the mental condition of an in- 
telligent b3ing whose thoughts did not clothe 
themselves more or less in words. 

The first objection has been welk answered by 
Mr Farrar, who points out that we ought to form 
our judgment of the mode in which it has seemed 
fit to the Creator to deal with the education of 
Man, from the evidence of fact, and not from the 
standard of our own feelings as to what is de- 
manded by the dignity of our race. If savages are 
found in a condition of life little above the brutes, 
it is plain that the existence of Man in such a con- 
dition cannot be incompatible either with the good- 
ness of Grod or with his views of the dignity of the 
human race. Nor have we any. pretension to 
claim for our ancestors a higher consideration in 
the eyes of Providence than is accorded to the 
Australian or the Negro. God is no respecter of 
persons or of races. We have only the choice of 
two alternatives : we must either suppose that 
Man was created in a civilized state and was per- 
mitted to fall back into the degraded condition 
which we witness among savage tribes ; or that he 
started from the lowest grade, and rose under 



OF MAN CONCEIVABLE. 139 

favourable circumstances by the cultivation of his 
natural faculties to the condition of civilized life. 
It is not easy to see why the first of these supposi- 
tions should be considered more to the honour of 
the Divine Providence than the second, although 
it may gratify some to think that their progenitors 
at least were at no time in the condition of the 
naked savage. Yet the latter alternative is more 
in accordance with everything we know of the pro- 
gress of the race in the arts of life. History every- 
where shows us the advance from barbarism to 
civilization. The step from savage to barbarous 
life is beyond the reach of history. 

We are accustomed to think of our ancestors as 
the rudest barbarians, and if we could go a stage 
further back and believe that we descended from 
the savage tribes, the discovery of whose rude flint 
weapons among the bones of the extinct races of 
animals with which they struggled, has lately 
opened a new chapter in history, it would probably 
be a small additional shock to carry on our 
thoughts to a period when the struggling savage 
had not even attained the use of speech. 
. Where the difficulty of conceiving a speechless 
condition of the human race is merely intellectual, 
it may b6 helped by considering the case of an in- 



140 THOUGHT 

telligent dog. A dog thinks of the absent as we 
do, and is subject to the same mental law that as- 
sociates the things in thought that have been con- 
nected in actual experience. When the dog sees 
his master put on his hat he knows that he is 
going to walk, and he shows his pleasure at the 
thoughts of being taken with him. The dog 
dreams ; he passes mentally in sleep through scenes 
similar to those which constitute his waking life. 
He understands signs, although he is without the 
instinct of making them. Even in our own case 
there is much of our thoughts which is wholly in- 
dependent of words, as when we think of a land- 
scape, a picture, a colour, an air of music. Now 
all that we can think without words, all that the 
mind of the dog can compass, would lie within the 
capacity of the human mute. There would then 
be ample stores in his mind on which the daily 
business of life would make it desirable to commu- 
nicate with his fellows. And if he resembled the 
deaf and dumb of the present day it is certain that 
he would sooner or later devise signs adequate for 
that purpose. *^ The mother tongue (so to speak)," 
says Mr Tyler in his very interesting work on the 
Early History of Mankind, " of the deaf and 
dumb is the language of signs. The evidence of 



WITHOUT SPEECH. 141 

the best observers tends to prove that they are 
capable of developing the gesture-language out of 
their own minds without the aid of speaking men." 
And to this effect he cites Kruse, who was himself 
deaf and dumb, and a well-known teacher of the 
deaf and dumb. "Thus the deaf and dumb must 
have a language, without which no thought can be 
brought to pass. But here nature soon comes to 
his help. What strikes him most, or what makes 
a distinction to him between one thing and another, 
such distinctive signs of objects are at once signs 
by which he knows these objects, and knows them 
again; they become tokens of things. And whilst 
he silently elaborates the signs he has found for 
single objects, that is, whilst he describes for him- 
self their forms in the air, or imitates them in 
thought with hands, fingers, and gestures, he 
developes for himself suitable signs to represent 
ideas, which serve him as a means of fixing ideas 
of different kinds in his mind and recalling them 
to his memory. And thus he makes himself a 
language, the so-called gesture-language, and with 
these few scanty and imperfect signs a way for 
thought is already broken, and with his thought 
as it now opens out, the language cultivates and 
forms itself further and further." — Tyler, p. 20. 



142 ABSTRACTION DEPENDENT ON SPEECH. 

The range of thought would be extremely limited 
without the aid of some fixed symbols to rest on 
as it proceeds, and thus the use of language has 
been compared by Sir William Hamilton to the 
masonry by which an engineer secures his work 
as he tunnels in sandy ground. ^The tunnel is 
continuallj^ driven a little in advance, but all pro- 
gress will be stopped by the crumbling in of the 
ground unless every foot of the boring is supported 
by the solid brickwork as it proceeds. So it is 
with thought and language. Without the aid of 
language, or of something equivalent, it would be 
possible for the mind to make little or no progress 
in the process of abstraction beyond the sensible 
images which supply the first materials of thought. 
Now, gestures are the readiest means of repre- 
senting by far the majority of things. We see, in 
fact, that wherever the need of communication has 
been felt between tribes that were " tongueless" to 
each other, the want has been supplied by the use 
of gestures. " It is well known, " says Tyler^ 
" that the Indians of North America, whose nomade 
habits and immense variety of languages must con- 
tinually make it needful for them to communicate 
with tribes whose language they cannot speak; 
carry the gesture-language to a high degree of 



GESTURE-LANGUAGE. 143 

perfection, and the same signs serve as a medium 
of converse from Hudson's Bay to the Gulf of 
Mexico. Several writers make mention of the 
Indian Pantomime, and it has been carefully de- 
scribed in the account of Major Long's expedition, 
and more recently by Captain Burton. The latter 
writer considers it to be a mixture of natural and 
conventional signs, but so far as I can judge from 
the hundred and fifty or so which he describes, and 
those I find mentioned elsewhere, I do not believe 
there is a really arbitrary sign amongst them. 
There are only about half a dozen of which the 
meaning is not at once evident, and even these ap- 
pear on close inspection to be natural signs, perhaps 
a little abbreviated or conventionalized. I am sure 
that a skilled deaf-and-dumb talker would under- 
stand an Indian interpreter, and be himself under- 
stood at first sight with scarcely any difiiculty." — 
p. 35. Burton says that the forefinger extended from 
the mouth means to tell truth : " one word ;" but 
two fingers means to tell lies : '' double tongue." 
And Tyler says he found that deaf-and-dumb chil- 
dren understood this Indian sign for lie quite as 
well as their own. 

The practical use of communication by gestures 
in ancient times is illustrated by a story which 



144 GESTURE-LAXGUAGE. 

Lucian relates of a certain barbarian prince of 
Pontus who was at Nero's court, and saw a panto- 
mime perform so well, that, though he could not 
understand the songs which the plaj^er was accom- 
panj'ing with his gestures, he could follow the 
performance from the acting alone. . When after- 
wards asked to choose what he would have for a 
present, the prince begged to have the player 
given to him, saying that it was difficult to get 
interpreters to communicate with some of the 
tribes in his neighbourhood, but that this man 
would answer the purpose perfectly. 

It is probable that the instinct of sign-making may 
have become more deeply ingrained in the mind by 
the use of speech through a thousand generations, 
but if it were somewhat less decided in the earKest 
period, it would only make the development of the 
gesture-language a slower process. Sooner or 
later the use of significant gestures would infallibly 
begin, and while some objects were easily imitated 
by drawing in the air or by actions of the arms 
and body, the aid of the voice would be requii^ed 
for the imitation of sounds, and would be found 
convenient for the representation of things of 
which sounds constituted the most striking charac- 
teristic, as of animals, for example, from their cries. 



I 



GESTURE-SIGNS. 145 

Thus a mixed system of communication would 
gradually be developed, consisting of gestures 
aided more or less by the exercise of the voice. 
But the superior convenience of the vocal element 
would give it a continually increasing importance 
in comparison with gesture-signs, until at last the 
position of the two would be completely reversed, 
and communication would be carried on, as is seen 
among savages, by speech with the aid of gesticu- 
lation. Thus Captain Cook says of the Tahitians, 
after mentioning their habit of counting on their 
fingers, that " in other instances, we observed that 
when they were conversing with each other they 
joined signs to their words, which were so express- 
ive that a stranger might easily apprehend their 
meaning." And Charlevoix describes in almost 
the same words the expressive pantomime with 
which an Indian orator accompanied his discourse. 
—Tyler, p. 44. 

A very few gesture-signs remain in use among 
ourselves, as beckoning with the finger or holding 
it up as if threatening with a stick, nodding or 
shaking the head in token of assent or dissent, 
joining hands in token of amity, snapping the 
fingers in token of contempt. The meaning of 
this last gesture, which is by no means apparent 

10 



146 SYMBOLISM OF GESTURE. 

on the face of it, is plausibly explained by Mr 
Tyler, who tells us that the sam3 sign made quite 
gently, as if rolling soma tiny object away between 
the finger and thumb, or the sign of flipping it 
away with the thumb nail and forefinger, are well- 
understood deaf-and-dumb gestures denoting any- 
thing tiny, insignificant, contemptible. But he 
surely misses the true significance of the hands 
being joined in prayer, when he explains that 
gesture as if intended to represent the act of ward- 
ing off a blow. For that would belong to the 
attitude of resistance and defence, whereas prayer 
calls for the expression of entire submission, so 
clearly shown in the figure of prostration. When 
the suppliant kneels and holds up his hands with 
the palms joined, he represents a captive who 
proves the completeness of his submission by offer- 
ing up his hands to be bound by the victor. It is 
the pictorial representation of the Latin dare 
jnamis, to signify submission. 

It seems that Grammar is altogether the pro- 
duct of speech. The language of gesture possesses 
no inflections ; it makes no distinction between 
verb and noun and adjective. The same sign 
stands for walk, ivalkest, loalking, walker. If a 
deaf-and-dumb person meant to state that a black 



GESTURE-LAXGUAGE. 147 

handsome horse trots and canters, he would signal, 
horse-black- handsome- trot- canter. Each sign, like 
the interjections of speech, presents a sensible 
image to the mind, to be understood literally or 
figuratively. The sign for butter is a pretence of 
spreading it on the palm of one hand with the 
finger of the other ; for man, the motion of taking 
off the hat. To hold the first two fingers apart 
like the letter Y and dart the finger-tips from the 
eyes is to see. Thinking is expressed by passing 
sharply the forefinger across the left breast as an 
image of a thought passing through the heart. To 
signify green the left hand is held flat to represent 
the ground, and the tips of the fingers of the other 
hand are pushed up beyond the edge to represent 
the growth of grass. For children the flat hand 
is held low down towards the ground and gradually 
raised to represent their growth, and the same 
sign stands for great ; while little is signified by 
first holding the hand high and then depressing 
it. Truth, as straightforwards speaking, is sig- 
nified by moving the finger straightforwards from 
the mouth ; while the finger is moved to one side 
to express lie, as sideways speaking.* 

* It is remarkable that the word lie itself seems to have its 
origin in the same figure. The Lettish l^eks, crooked (from 
10 * 



148 GESTURE -LANGUAGE 

The construction of the sentence in gesture- 
language is to be gathered from the order of utter- 
ance. " That which seems mOst important to the 
deaf-mute," says Schmalz, " he always sets before 
the rest, and that which seems to him superfluous he 
leaves out. For instance, to say. My father gave 
me an apple, he makes the sign for apple, then 
for father, then for I, without adding that for 
give." A look of inquiry converts an assertion 
into a question. The interrogations who^ whichy 
are made by looking or pointing about in an 
inquiring manner, in fact, by a number of unsuc- 
cessful attempts to say he, that. The deaf-and- 
dumb child's way of asking Who has beaten you, 
would be. You beaten, who was it ? Instead of 
asking What did you have for dinner ? he would 
put it. Did you have soup ? porridge ? and so 
forth. The deaf-mute may be taught a sign for 
the verb to be, but he makes no use of it in 

leeict, to bend), is used in the sense of wrong, erroneous, 
false, uneven, and in composition is applied to signify a Will- 
o'-the-wisp, a wig or false hair, a by-way, a painted face or 
a mask, &c. In Esthonian it takes the form of liig, and in 
addition to several of the foregoing senses, when joined to 
paiatus, speech \liigpaiatus], it signifies a lie, and thus afibrdg 
a plausible explanation of the German lilge and English lie. 



NOT ADAPTED FOR ABSTRACTION. 149 

familiar intercourse. To make is too abstract an 
idea for him. To show that the tailor makes the 
coat, or that the carpenter makes the table, he 
would represent the tailor sewing the coat and the 
carpenter sawing and planing the table. Such a 
proposition as, E,ain makes the land fruitful, would 
not come into his way of thinking : rain falls, 
plants grow, would be his pictorial expression. — 
Tyler, 31. 

The low capacity of the gesture-language for 
the expression of abstract conceptions throws 
great doubt on the analysis of the Sanscrit gram- 
marians, who for the most part attribute to their 
primary roots meanings of the most general kind, 
such as to go, which alone is given for forty or 
fifty of the roots. "We never, says Professor 
M tiller, meet with primitive roots expressive of 
such special acts as raining, thundering, hailing, 
sneezing. (2nd Series, p. 352.) 

Professor Miiller would persuade us that 
thunder, instead of being connected with such 
words as Old Norse dunVy dynr^ rumbling noise, 
crash, din, English din, dim, stun, or Latin tundere, 
is derived from the Sanscrit root tan, which from 
signifying stretch is used to express " that tension 
of the air which gives rise to sound." So that 



150 EARLIEST FORMS OF SPEECH 

thunder, of all things in the world, remained with- 
out a name until so philosophic an idea could be 
entertained as the dependence of sound upon the 
elasticity of the air ! But if any object whatever 
was named from imitation there would be none 
more likely to take its designation frc^m that prin- 
ciple than thunder. And in fact the significant 
element in the German form of the word, donner, 
is identical with the imitative syllable used in 
Italian to represent the loud clang of bells, don- 
don. In the same language tontonare, a manifest 
onomatopoeia, is to make a thundering noise, to 
murmur and grumble. — Florio. 

Now wendeth this ost in wardes ten, 
Ful wel araied with noblemen. 
The dust arose, the centre had wonder, 
The erthe doned like the tlionder. 

Sir Generldes, 1. 3774. 

Yoruba, dondon, a kind of drum. 

It is well known that there is small power of 
abstraction among barbarous people, whose words 
for the most part signify things apprehensible by 
sense. They are said also to be very poor in 
general terms, which is not quite the same thing. 
'' The Malay, " says Mr Crawford, " is very defi- 
cient in abstract words, and the usual train of ideas 



NOT ABSTRACT. 



151 



of the people who speak it does not lead them to 
make a frequent use even of the few they possess. 
They have copious words for colours, yet borrow 
the word colour, ivarnay from the Sanscrit. With 
this poverty of the abstract is united an abundance 
of the concrete.'' The Australians have no generic 
word for fish, bird, or tree ; and the Eskimo, 
though he has verbs for seal fishing, whale fishing, 
and every other kind of fishing, has no verb meaning 
simply to fish.* Where the things to be named 
are natural objects, it does not require a greater 
effort of abstraction to conceive a more comprehen- 
sive, or generic, than a more restricted distinction. 
The conception of an object as a thing of a certain 
kind depends upon our recognition in it of the 
points of resemblance which constitute our notion 
of the kind in question. And if these generic 
features are matters apprehensible by sense, as well 
as the specific distinctions by which the genus is 
broken up into subordinate kinds, it wiU be matter 
of chance whether the genus first gets a name or 
the species. Thus the power of flight which is 
characteristic of birds (speaking broadly) may be 
recognized by the same direct observation which 
distinguishes the special features of a goose and a 
* Farrar, Chapters on Language, 199, 



152 EARLIEST FORMS OF SPEECH 

duck, and we cannot doubt that the feathered race 
(whether they receiyed a name or not) would be 
thought of as distinct from other animals, at least 
as early as the discrimination of any particular 
kind of bird. It is certain, at any rate, that man 
would have known such a genus as a^hawk before 
he distinguished a kestrel or a sparrow-hawk ; he 
would have been familiar with a wagtail before he 
recognized the distinction between a pied wagtail 
and a grey one. But the idea of colour as the 
generic character, compared with blue and red and 
yellow as subordinate species, stands on a different 
footing. I can only apprehend an object as 
coloured by seeing it as blue or red or yellow. 
Colour in general is that which is common to 
these subordinate species. It cannot be exhibited 
to the bodily eye in a separate form, and can only 
be made an object of thought by an effort which 
appears to be bej^ond the natural requirements of 
the barbarian mind, or of those who are confined 
to the language of gesture. 

Thus it would appear that the use of speech is 
essential to any progress in abstract thought. As 
long as we were without names for blue or red or 
yellow, we could only think of one of those colours 
by recalling apicture of the hue to the remembrance 



] 



NOT ABSTRACT. 153 

or imagination, an operation in wliicli the mind 
would be fully occupied with what was before it for 
the time being, with no spare attention to bestow 
on the comparison of the present with any absent 
object. But when the particular object is asso- 
ciated with a certain name, it can be kept l^efore 
the mind by a much slighter effort, and the grasp 
of the understanding is rendered proportionally 
more comprehensive. When we have names for 
blue and red and yellow, we are able by their 
means to retain the conceptions before the mind 
while we compare them with each other or with 
other things. We observe that they all have some- 
thing in common which does not belong to round 
or square, and thus we rise to the abstract concep- 
tions of colour and of shape. 

But if language is thus important in the forma- 
tipn of abstract conceptions, it is hardly possible 
that the earliest roots should have those abstract 
significations which are attributed to them by the 
Sanscrit scholars. We cannot doubt that language 
would proceed pari passu with the development of 
thought. And as thought undoubtedly proceeds 
from the concrete to the abstract, we may be sure 
that language would follow in the same direction. 

I have quoted largely from Mr Tyler's instruct- 



154 GROWTH OF CONVICTION 

ive chapters of gesture-signs because a familiarity 
with that mode of expression brings home to the 
mind, in a way that nothing else can do, the possi- 
bility of a natural origin of language as an his- 
torical fact. No one has any difficulty in under- 
standing the origin of gesture-signi^ and though 
there are some of these, such as nodding and shak- 
ing the head, that we use every day with as little 
conception of the principle of their significance as 
we have of the words yes and no, yet it never oc- 
curred to any one to suppose that they had any more 
abstruse origin than there presentation of some for- 
gotten action typical of acceptance or rejection. I 
only ask that the inquirer should act on the same 
principles in his search for the origin of the vocal 
signs, and when he finds that a sensible portion of 
these may be explained on the same imitative 
principle, that he should not at once look out for a 
different origin for those which remain unex- 
plained, but should be ready to admit the same 
presumption of uniformity of causation, and to 
make the same allowance for the disfigurement of 
the symbol by the wear and tear of ages, as in the 
case of the gesture- signs. Thus all analogy tends 
to the belief that the whole of language would be 
found to spring from an imitative source, if the 



WITH STUDY OF SUBJECT. 155 

entire pedigree of every word were open before us. 
It is a question of probabilities as to matter of fact, 
and though, it may be considered that the theory 
will not be conclusively established until it has 
been made to account for every word of the lan- 
guage, yet our conviction in the soundness of the 
theory wiU continually grow in strength as we 
study the subject, and learn from repeated ex- 
perience the light it throws upon the significance 
of words. 



156 



APPENDIX. ^ 



I. 



The following table is extracted from a paper 
by Professor J. C. E. Buscbman, originally pub- 
lished in the Transactions of the Berlin Academy 
der Wissenscbaften for 1852, and translated by Mr 
Campbell Clarke, in the Proceedings of the Philo- 
logical Society, Vol. vi. p. 188. 

PA, FATHER. 

pa — Karean, Malayan, Movimi, New Zealand, 

Tungusian, Timmanee. 
ba — Bullom, Hottentot, Kirautee (India), Mala- 

gasi, ShilK (Barbary). 
bap — Arinzi (ontheYenesei), Bengali, Canarese. 
pap — Nicobar. 
bab — Arabic, Begarmi, Hindustani, Kurd, Eo- 

mansh. 
papa — Bullom, Carib, Darien, &c. 



* 



APPENDIX. 157 

paba — Muysca. 

bapa — Bali, Javanese, Malayan, &c. 

baba — Albanian, Arabic, Bengali, Carib, Kabyle, 

Turkish, &c. 
bawa — Gujeratti, Hindustani, Malabar, 
fafe — Susu. 
fabe — Seracole. 

PA, MOTHER. 

ba, fa, mba, bamo — Mandingo. 

fafa, fawa — Japanese. 

papai — Araucanian. 

be, bi, bo, bibi — Galibi, Otomi. 

baba — Nepaul. 

bama — Fulab, 

AP, FATHER. 

ab — Arabic, Etbiopic, Hebrew, Siberian. 

apa — Ava, Bhoteea, Hungarian. 

appa — Bhutan, Cingalese, N. American, Tshu- 

ktshi. 
aba — Etbiopic, &c. 
abba — Galla, Telinga. 
avva — "Walachian. 
epe — Koriak. 
ipa-=— Arinzi. 



158 APPENDIX. ■ 

obo, abam, abbeda — Siberian, 
abob — Hottentot, Korana. 
abami — Korea, 
ubaba — Fingo, Zulu, 
abban, appin — Tamul. 

AP, MOTHER. ^ 

amba — Bengalee, Yogul. 

aapu — Kurilian. 

ambu — Madura. 

ewa — Samoiede. 

ibu — Javanese, Malayan, &c. 

abai-— Tsberemis s. 

ambok — Javanese. 

TA, FATHER. 

ta — Botocudo, Mexican, Mandingo, Otomi. 

da — Shilli (Barbary). 

nda — Tapua (Africa). 

tbo — Hottentot. 

tat — Bengalee, Celtic, Congo, &c. 

taat, tatta — Estbonian. 

tad— Welsb. 

dad — English. 

tata — Angola, Congo, Polish, &c. 

tantai — Minetari. 



APPENDIX. 159 

dada — Mandara, Shilli, &c. 

tatai — Mordvin. 

dade, tati — Africa. 

dadi — Gipsy. 

tato — Karelian. 

titi — Japanese. 

tata — Rocky Mountains. 

TA, MOTHER. 

de, nde— Jaloof. 

tai — Bengalee, New Zealand, 
dai — Gipsy, 
deda — Georgian, 
tite — Cora. 

AT, FATHER. 

at — Celtic. 

aat^ Albanian. 

ata — Turkish, Moko (Afr.), Assiniboine. 

atta— Gothic, Greek. 

otah, otta — Dakotah. 

aita — Basque. 

atya — Hungarian. 

AT, MOTHER. 

hada— Galla. 



160 APPENDIX. 

etta — Tartar. 
ote — Zamuca. 

MA, MOTHER. 

ma — Bengalee; Celtic, Javanese, Malayan, Afri- 
can, Thibetan. 

me — Tonquin, Otomi, Siamese. 

mi — Bui'mese. 

mu — Chinese. 

mai — Hindustani, Portuguese, Sindhee. 

mai-ka — Illyrian. 

mau — Annamite, Coptic. 

maia — Brazilian. 

mam — Arabic, Breton, Permian, Welsh. 

mama — Angola , Congo, Hindustani, Hottentot, 
Peruvian, &c. 

mamma — Albanian, Finnish, Shilli, &c. 

m amo — Karelian . 

meme — Bali. 

memme — Koriak. 

moma — Lithuanian. 



A, FATHER. 



ma — Ende, Madura, 
mi — Kroo. 
mu — Georgian. 



APPENDIX. IHI 

mam — ]S'ew Holland. 

mama, rauma — Greorgian, Iberian. 

mamma — Kartulinian . 

mamman, mammer — xS^ew Holland. 

AM, MOTHER. 

am — Ostiak, Yogul. 

em — Hebrew. 

iim — Korana. 

ama — Basque, Malayan, Sec, 

amma — Cingalese, Samoiede, &c. 

hamma — Fula. 

amme — Malabar. 

emraa — Estlionian . 

imma — Kabyle. 

urn ma — Bhoteea. 

ubma — Caffre. 

amam — Eskimo. 

AM, FATHER 

ama, amma — Philippines, Sunda, Formosa, &c. 
ami, ammii, ammen — Siberian. 

^-A, MOTHER 

na — Maj^a. 

mna — Asbantee, 

11 



162 APPENDIX. 

ni — Croo. 

nu — Kyen (India). 

nah-hali, nohali — N. America. 

nan — Mexican. 

nana — Darien. 

nanna — Pottawotami. v, 

nene — Tartar. 

neni — Fulah. 

nine — Turkish. 

nama — Benin. 

NA, FATHER. 

nna — Eboe. 

nan — -Albanian, Wen dish. 

nanna — Albanian. 

ninna — Blackfoots. 

nang — Africa. 

nape — Maipure. 

AX, MOTHER. 

ana — Tartar, Turkish, Turgusian. 

anah — Tuscarora. 

anna — Delaware, &c., Tartar. 

ena, oni — Ashantee, &c. 

enna — Guinea. 

eenah — D aco t ah . 



APPENDIX. 163 



ina — Philippines, &c. 
onny — Tun gusian . 
anan — Huron, 
inan — Dacotah. 
unina — Caffre. 
ananak — Greenland. 

AX, FATHER. 

anneh — Seneca . 

ina — Ceram, Guarami. 

una — Aino. 



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